One of the best things about working on our little street in Newstead has been the Pipi Designs Espresso Store. Not only did it mean that delicious coffee was only a short stroll away, but the two proprietors – David and Carol – are the friendliest baristas that I’ve ever met! From 6:30 AM every weekday, they were always there to help brighten up the mornings with a coffee and a chat – and needless to say, they knew everyone by name, and their regular coffee order!

Sadly for us, they’ve decided that the time has come to move on! Their business has been sold to someone else (who I’m yet to meet/judge), but of course it will never be the same without them. And so, we all said “farewell” to them on Friday, as they made us all our last ever Pipi Designs coffee. Well, actually, I managed to convince them to let me make my own coffee – after all, I’ve always wanted to be a full-time barista!

(Thanks to Ben for the photo)

David and Carol will definitely be missed around Newstead, but hopefully they’ll find happiness in whatever ventures they take on next!

Back when Oscar was only a few weeks old, Todd and Shannon sent him a lovely trainee barista apron. So cute! And yet, so practical! After all, Oscar has been in training since the day he was born! Perhaps even since before he was born, if that’s technically possible!

Admittedly, the first few months of lessons were centered around self control during periods of loud noise, and I can now happily report that Oscar no longer bursts into tears when the coffee grinder is turned on. Success!

Since then however, we’ve moved on to more hands-on exercises:

You don’t have to say it. I know he’s awesome.

(Ok, you can say it.)

Oh, how I wish there were more people like Al and Suz in the world; not only would the world be a far better place, but there’d be more people out there who send me fresh coffee beans in the mail.

I had never heard of 5 senses coffee before, and Al tells me he got on to them via a friend of his that runs a high-end restaurant down the coast. We tried them immediately the morning after we got them, and we were quite impressed. They’re a lighter roast compared to our regular beans, to the point where I think they smell almost sweet, and maybe even a little fruity.

They make a better “first thing in the morning” espresso in my opinion, as they’re not as strong and punchy as our regular beans. I’d happily recommend them, and I’d happily buy them again.

A huge thanks to Al for thinking of us!

Oscar is finally starting to appreciate how awesome it is to have fresh coffee beans in the house.

Admittedly at this stage, his love only extends so far as, “they make an interesting noise when you shake the tin”, but at least it’s a start.

Today is our sixth wedding anniversary! I think we did pretty well to put up with each other for almost six years before we required the company of a baby to keep our lives interesting .

In eighteen years time, Oscar is going to look at this photo and say, “man, my parents were so cool, I just don’t know what happened to them!”. Either that or, “c’mon, I was going for the high five here, and you just left me hanging!”. Sorry Oscar.

Anyway, to celebrate our anniversary, we had breakfast at Brother Espresso with Jason and Susan. Luke, Sam and Cooper (owerns of the store) and Neal and Aimee (long time friend of Susan) also dropped in to say hello; Oscar, as usual, was the star of the show.

We’re also going out for dinner tonight at Embers at Milton, where we’ll hopefully be enjoying one of the best steaks of our lives! Kristy is especially looking forward to hers being cooked medium rare – a delicacy she had to forgo whilst pregnant. Now, if only we could have a bottle of red to go with it…. !

Happy anniversary baby.

More photos in the Anniversary Breakfast album on Picasaweb or Facebook.

We felt very privileged to be visited by Todd on Saturday afternoon, given that he was only in Brisbane for around 24 hours! He’s on his way to Big White in Canada, to work and board for the upcoming ski season. Awesome!

But the real winner of the visit was Oscar, who received a very cool hand made present courtesy of Todd and Shan:

What a star! Oscar looked quite the part in his new apron, when we made our pancakes and coffee for breakfast on Sunday morning!

Admittedly his latte art needs a bit of work, but I guess I can’t expect too much from a trainee.

Venue number four in the £5 Breakfast Challenge was Sandwich Box, which is the last one on our side of the road before Acton Lane. Given that it’s right next to the Luna Caffe it’s pretty easy to miss, or at least to mistake them as the same place!

Coming in at only £4, including a coffee or tea (with no extra charge for a latte), their Full English Breakfast is easily the best value that we’ve encountered so far. Their coffee was really good, too – a little on the large size for me, but the favour was great.

As you can see, the food was also generously proportioned: two eggs, two pieces of toast, a sausage, two rashers of bacon, a hashbrown, baked beans, mushrooms, and tomato. On the plus side, the eggs were perfectly cooked, with solid whites but runny yolks. I also quite enjoyed the sausage – a little salty, but it had a nice smokey flavour, like at Luna.

The rest of the meal tasted good enough (though once again I wasn’t a fan of the bacon); however this is the first place we’ve eaten at and felt a bit shady afterwards. Perhaps it was from the sheer quantity of food, though we both think that the quality of the ingredients may have been on the lower side of average.

They also lose points for not offering any fresh juice; I had trouble with the bird’s accent and couldn’t work out if they had run out or if they simply didn’t have it, but I suspect it’s the latter.

To their credit, we walked away feeling very full, and at only nine quid for our two breakfasts and a bottle of juice, my wallet didn’t even take too big a hit. If I was only after a coffee, then Sandwich Box would be top of my list of places to revisit, but for breakfast, I think we’ll be taking our money elsewhere. gerrod.com rating: 7/10.

One of the presents that Jason and Susan sent me for my birthday was a KeepCup. I’d never heard of these until I unwrapped it, but the concept is fairly simple – a reusable coffee cup, that looks like a disposable cup. Genius!

For some reason though, I kept forgetting to take it with me to work, so for the last two weeks, it has been sitting on the shelf at home, looking at me shamefully. Thank goodness Stacey kept nagging me to send her a photo and a review – I finally packed it yesterday for it’s inaugural coffee run!

I’m pleased to say that the cup performed swimmingly! The girl at Costa clearly wasn’t used to people bringing in their own cups, because when I asked her if I could use it, she defensively asked, “What’s wrong with my cup?”. She was equally unimpressed when I told her that her cups were environmentally unfriendly; but eventually she gave in and used my cup. I kept a careful eye on her to make sure she didn’t spit into my coffee.

Besides the obvious environmental benefits, I also love that they’re a “standard” size according to Australian baristas. This means that the ratio of coffee to milk much closer than what it usually is over here. And, since the cup is smaller than the Brit’s usual “small” cup, the coffee is cheaper, too!

All up, and absolutely excellent present – one I can’t recommend highly enough for the take-out coffee lover in your family. Thanks, Jason and Susan!

(Happy now, Racey?)

Next up in the £5 breakfast challenge was the Hot House Cafe, only a few doors down from the Blueberry cafe. It markets itself as an internet cafe, but with a Full English Breakfast for sale at only £4.95 including coffee, it’s definitely a contender for the breakfast crowd.

(It was raining quite heavily when we went, so I couldn’t take an outside photo.)

One of the first things that we noticed about Hot House was that it seemed to have a bunch of regular patrons; either that, or all the waitresses were psychic and were doing a lot of mind reading. I suspect it’s the former. This suggested to me that we were in for quite a treat!

Hot House’s “Full English Breakfast” consisted of two bacon rashers, a sausage, mushrooms, two fried eggs, a hash brown, baked beans, and two pieces of (heavily buttered) toast. Like Blueberry, I wasn’t given an option on the type of toast that I wanted, but their default option tried to cater for everyone with one piece each white and brown bread. Their breakfast also included a tea or a coffee which I thought was very generous, even though they charged me an extra 50p to upsize to a latte (instead of regular black coffee).

Overall, the meal was quite good, though everything was rather salty, most especially the bacon. Also on the downside was the hash brown which was a little soggy, and the baked beans which were quite bland – as if the sauce was there just to hold the beans together but not to provide any flavour. The sausage was quite good though; the mushrooms were even better, and the eggs were the absolute highlight of the meal – perfectly cooked with solid whites, but runny yolks. Yum!

My 50p coffee was acceptable, though I wouldn’t go there if all I was after was a coffee. They didn’t use fresh beans, and instead opted for pre-ground coffee from a tin in the fridge. And though the coffee didn’t taste bad, it was a little light on any. Perhaps a second shot would have helped, though not as much as freshly ground beans would have.

Kristy opted out of this challenge, and instead had smoked salmon (which was quite generously apportioned) over scrambled eggs, and a freshly squeezed orange juice. Bonus points to them for taking “freshly squeezed” very literally, with a huge orange juicer behind the counter!

All up we paid only £11.35 for both of our meals, and we both walked out with very satisfied bellies. I don’t think the quality of the food was quite as good as it was at Blueberry, however it wasn’t far off. Hot House definitely scores higher on both variety and value for money though, and given the choice between the two, I’d be hard pressed to make a decision. gerrod.com rating: 8.5/10.

When we first came (back) to Chiswick to sign the lease on our flat, I noticed that between here and Turnham Green, there are at least 5 cafes that each offer some form of breakfast for £5 or less. Helllloooo… do I hear a challenge in the making? Yes I do!

Enter: The £5 breakfast challenge. Yes, it’s an extremely creative name, and I laboured over it until I was happy. I was also considering dropping the pound sign, and instead going for “The five pound breakfast challenge”, because I’m using a US keyboard and I don’t have a convenient button for “£”. However, I felt that our dear American readers may think I’m trying to eat five pounds of breakfast foods, rather than spending five pounds on breakfast. It’s an important distinction.

Anyway – the first cafe to unknowingly step up to the plate was the Blueberry Cafe. From the outside, it definitely looks like the swankiest of them all, but a rather unfortunately placed red statue blocks its view of the high rode. (Note: it may look like a mail box, however Royal Mail are on strike these days more often than not, so it doesn’t work like a mail box).

Blueberry’s £5 breakfast comes with two fried eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, baked beans, and two pieces of wholegrain toast. Kristy and I both liked that wholegrain was the default bread – given the option of white, we both probably would have taken it, yet the wholegrain was delicious and nutritious! Still, some options would have been nice – I’m not really a bacon person, and would have preferred to swap out my rashers for sausages if I could have; and I love me some breakfast tomato.

A few points off for not offering any beverage with the meal – we each ordered a freshly squeezed OJ, which we felt was a decent size, and fairly good value for money. I also ordered a latte, which unfortunately was about the size of a child’s beach bucket, and far, far too hot for my liking.

The addition of three beverages to our meal drove the cost up to around £16, however I figured that if you’re going to go somewhere for breakfast, you’re likely to want at least one accompanying beverage, so they should be part of the review.

Blueberry suffers from “the first cab off the rank” syndrome – once we’ve been to each of the cafes, it may on reflection be the best, but until that point we can only rate it on its lonesome. The food was definitely well prepared, and high quality, but not quite enough variety to bring home the proverbial bacon. gerrod.com rating: 8/10.