Bold Street Coffee
Susie Stubbs
Bold Street Coffee is an indie Liverpool café that does it all: good food, sweet surrounds and a damn fine cup of coffee.
As a nation, we seem to spend an awful lot of time inside the humble coffee house. You can’t walk down the high street without being accosted by a Costa, while the indie side of the industry is in as rude a health as the ubiquitous chains. We’re not complaining. We have yet to reach our limit when it comes to coffee consumption (we just talk really, really fast). Yet while new places keep popping up, sometimes it’s gratifying to go back to our indie roots.
Bold Street Coffee is one such place, an independent coffee house in Liverpool that has been going, in one form or another, since the late 1990s. And we are more than happy to report that it has maintained its creative edge; since re-launching under new ownership in 2010, Bold Street Coffee has become one of the finest places in Liverpool to eat, drink a damn fine cup of coffee and relax with like-minded souls.
There is a real enthusiasm for coffee here and it shows
You don’t have to be one of the cool kids to enjoy Bold Street Coffee. It’s just the right side of creative to feel genuinely welcoming, and the boys behind the counter are happy to talk you through a coffee menu that features an own-blend espresso and several kinds of single origin filter coffee (if your experience of filter coffee to date is that bitter, icky stuff served up at hotel buffets, the stuff on sale here is nothing short of revolutionary). There is a real enthusiasm for coffee here and it shows: Bold Street Coffee has won plaudits from the likes of The Independent and the Liverpool Food & Drink Awards.
Food, meanwhile, leans towards the sarnie-and-cake side of dining: locally-sourced ingredients, a distinct lack of weird additives, chunky bread and homemade cakes. The breakfast menu features the epic sausage buoy (brioche bun, sausage patty, scrambled egg, cheese and sauce), smashed avocado on toast, and the full BSC fry or veggie fry.
As for the rest: expect changing wall art exhibitions with an illustrative bent, free WiFi (naturally), occasional after hours events and coffee tasting sessions, and a good stash of local print ‘zines (you can usually pick up a copy of the excellent Bido Lito! and less frequent but equally sound Spiel here). The only downside of Bold Street Coffee is its size: the pocket-sized place gets rammed at lunchtimes and weekends – though it’s worth the wait for a chance to sit in such pleasing surrounds. And drink that damn fine coffee, of course.
