Camden Coffee Shop

This is a really great small place for coffee lovers!
You know that sometimes, often in the morning, when you walk on the street and you smell fresh coffee but don’t know where it comes from, you just have to find out. This morning I could smell extremely good coffee already a mile ahead from finding out that there is actually a somewhat hidden coffee shop in Camden. And this is an actual shop selling coffee, the product and not the drink!
You can buy different types of coffee beans and have them to grind it to your personal need and type of coffee maker.
This is the real stuff, they do their own roasting and grinding, don’t have to look further!

I had to come to Unilocal to review this place, like other posters before me, because this place is a national treasure. My sweetie and I are big fans of single-​origin coffee, which makes us a minority in London, but we stumbled across another coffee shop in Camden that referred us to this place, and we are so happy to have found it!
It’s a tiny, one-​employee shop but this guy really knows his stuff. While we were there, he was roasting coffee in the (now antique) cylinder roaster that another Unilocaler has posted a photo of. During our conversation, he jumped up and came around the counter and squeezed past us to halt the roasting process. He knew, simply by the smell and sound and his sense of how long it had been roasting, when the beans were done! The scales and other equipment in the shop are not high-​tech but they’re sturdy and gets the job done; quite fun to observe.
We had come in search of raw beans that we could take home and roast ourselves, and although he typically doesn’t sell them green, he sold some to us and gave us instructions on how to store them properly as well. We took them home and have been roasting small batches at a time and enjoying them very much! I look forward to visiting his shop again next time we’re in London.
If you enjoy making quality coffee at home, this guy knows his stuff.
Note that some of the reviews seem to be describing a café that serves coffee and pastries; this shop only sells beans but they don’t have space for tables to serve coffee or food. They might be referring to the similarly named «Camden Coffee House» which is close by.

A perfect place for a nice breakfast or brunch. Coffee and cakes are delicious and always fresh. The prices may seem a little steep to some people but I can guarantee it’s worth it. Staff is lovely.

We just stumbled across this place by accident one evening and wondered if it was even open to the public. We returned a week later during business hours, and sure enough, the coffee roasters were turning, and the aroma was intoxicating.
It’s a tiny shop with barely enough room for a couple of customers, but the proprietor has about 8 beans or blends on offer, cash sales only. The floor is covered with giant burlap sacks of coffee, and even more interestingly, the roasting and grinding machines are from a bygone era. As noted by the previous poster, the proprietor/​owner has had the shop for 32 years, but the shop has been around much longer, as his uncle owned it before him. The coffee roasting machines date from 1925. Walking into this shop is like visiting a museum of London past.
He was happy to chat a bit and asked us what kind of coffee we liked and how we prepared it. A few minutes later he handed over a 250g bag of ground Brazillian Santos with a dark espresso roast for about £3.80.
Later, when we continued on through Camden to do some shopping, we were amazed at how the intense smell of the coffee was emanating out of my bag, even though he had taped up the paper package inside a plastic bag. Those freshly roasted and ground beans were almost overpowering, really. We had a cup when we got home and it was really delicious. We’ve been enjoying it all week.
This place is a real gem! We’ll definitely be regulars.

This little hole in the wall is an absolute London treasure. Finding it by accident was definitely the highlight of my day. I was riding by and saw this little shop that looked like it didn’t belong in today’s London, but in the London of the past. I looked at my watch and it was 5:30pm, and saw that the sign on the door said the shop was open until 5:30pm. However, the wonderful independent shop owner let us in anyway.
As soon as you step inside, the amaaaaaazing aroma of coffee blissfully surrounds you. There are huge sacks of Colombian (and some from other places, too) coffee beans along the walls, where you can see (and smell — they surprisingly don’t have a smell!) raw coffee beans in their natural form. The store has the different types of coffee beans available on display for you to smell and ask as many questions as you want. The shop keeper is extremely helpful, friendly, knowledgable, and will tell you anything you may need to know to find the perfect coffee.
All the coffee beans are roasted in the shop (hence why it smells so fantastic). You can choose the type of coffee bean that you want (We choose a very dark, strong coffee that tastes very mild, smooth and chocolatey– so good) and the owner will ask how you make your coffee (i.e. what type of machine you use). If you wish, he will then grind the beans right there and then in front of you to the right coarseness appropriate for your own brewing method!
Very excited about our discovery, I asked how long the shop had been there. The shop keeper responded that it had been there since 1915 (he might have said 1950, but I think it was 1915, which is believable), and that he had been running the shop since 1978. That alone just goes to shop you that a surviving little hole in the wall like that HAS to be something really special!
Experiencing and getting coffee from this place felt really good. It felt right. In fact, it felt better than right. I will never buy pre-​ground, mass-​produced, packaged coffee from Tesco, Starbucks, or anywhere else again. In addition, this place in inexpensive and easy to find, directly off of Camden High Street on a cute little side street.
A true London gem that cannot be missed.

Really nice vibe — keen and enthusiastic owner. Joking and making a community vibe — sometimes rare in london.
good coffee too!

The shop is so basic and unassuming, that I didn’t even notice it for months! Run by one guy, it is basically a shell of a shop, with a few bags of coffee beans, a bean roaster, and a grinder. Tell him what you want — a blend or pure — and he will give you a bag of great coffee, if slightly on the rough side. It’s quite exciting to see him roast the beans in the shop (like a hot tombola!), although you’d be wise to stand outside and look through the window as the shop quickly fills up with smoke!

If you’re looking for a sophisticated coffee shop where to meet your friends in style this isn’t the place for you. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for freshly roasted coffee, wander no longer. This is a totally unpretentious, comforting-​smelling, traditional shop (the like of which you may find on the Continent) that really means business — and they have Greek coffee too! If I did drink coffee as well as smelling it, I might have added a fifth star to this review — now it’s up to you, coffee-​tasters!