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Please Say Please
Opening its doors in Adelaide’s busy business district in March last year, Please Say Please drew in new customers with a $1 coffee special. While the price tag might have been the initial draw card, over 12 months have passed and those first customers have become loyal regulars.
More often than not, experienced barista and Owner Daniel Freer mans the Synesso generation 2 Hydra coffee machine. He says a consistently great coffee has become an expectation.
“The thing that really sets us apart is that our main focus is on our coffee. We’ve all been in this industry for a while and know how important it is to get it right,” says Daniel. “We really believe in the quality of our product, which I think starts with great coffee beans, staff knowledge and quality of machinery.”
Serving up beans roasted by Proud Mary Coffee in Melbourne, Please Say Please offers espresso, filter, and cold brew coffee.
Please Say Please uses a V60 pour over for their filter brew, and between one and three different single origins are available daily.
“For espresso we have our seasonal house blend as well as a single origin that changes weekly. Our house blend is really balanced, it makes a lovely black or white coffee,” says Daniel.
The café is built from rustic, raw materials, with just one eight-seater communal table and two seats at the bar.
“We do a lot of takeaways from our little window and we’re super quick at pumping them out,” says Daniel. “We get a lot of people coming into our little shop for a chat during peak period, which is the best part of being a barista.”
For their food selection Please Say Please offers simple brunch options, including fig and hazelnut toast, house made bircher muesli, chai porridge, and ciabatta toasties.
They’re also looking to bottle their own cold brew, which you can keep an eye out for next summer.
Exchange Specialty Coffee
Tom Roden has the London coffee scene to thank for inspiring the opening of Exchange Specialty Coffee.
After he’d finished his university degree, Tom travelled to London and started working at Workshop Coffee in July 2011.
“It was a real eye opening experience for me. I got a lot of inspiration from Workshop Coffee, including their wonderful approach to specialty coffee and hospitality in an engaging environment. It gave me a lot of insight into how a business should operate from the word go,” says Tom.
Upon his return to Australia, Tom was disillusioned by the lack of variety of quality coffee in Adelaide. “I know I had to start my own place otherwise I’d be continuously disappointed,” he says.
What evolved next was Tom’s own coffee shop, Exchange Specialty Coffee, which opened in July 2013. Tom describes his coffee bar as “minimalist”, with nothing there that doesn’t need to be. “It’s a functional, clean, simple space that’s designed to facilitate interaction between staff and customers,” Tom says. “I didn’t want a space where baristas could hide away behind a wall, I wanted them to engage with the customers.”
As such, a large communal table invites customers to gather together, and a brew bar encourages guests to explore more adventurous coffee options, including aeropress, V60 and filter over ice using a Japanese cold brew method.
Exchange Specialty Coffee serves Market Lane Coffee for their seasonal espresso and filter roasts. At the time of print Market Lane’s seasonal espresso comprised a Doña Magdalena, a washed coffee from Bolivia, and São Judas, a pulped natural coffee from Brazil.
Single estate espressos rotate every few days. Guest single estate coffees are also available, with past favourites from the Coffee Collective in Denmark, Workshop Coffee in London, Mecca, Smallbatch and Seven Seeds.
Located in the backstreets of Adelaide, Tom says customers find the café’s location intriuging. “People say we’re Melbournised because our café is moved from the main street to the back street,” he says. “It’s a fantastic place to work. You shouldn’t work in hospitality if you don’t enjoy daily interaction – so thankfully I’ve found the right career.”
Pure Boutique Coffee Bar
When Pure Boutique Coffee Bar became overcrowded with coffee-craving customers, Owner Warwick Deare’s only solution was to expand. As luck would have it, the newly refurbished coffee bar reopened in November – directly across the road from their previous location.
“We’re up and running in a much larger space and we’re going from strength to strength,” says Warwick. “Glenelg is a bustling tourist spot near the beachside so we needed to cater to the growth of our customers and expand.”
The new coffee bar has additional floor space, a kitchen, and a new-look menu offering boutique beer and wines. “We still have a strong boutique coffee focus but we’re expanding our interests because we see a great marriage between beer, wine and coffee,” says Warwick.
Taking influence from the Norwegian coffee scene, Warwick has introduced a range of coffee cocktails to his venue. The Bartender’s Latte is their signature drink, which includes small cold drip ice cubes as a additional feature. Another favourite is the Antipode, which consists of a large sphere-shaped cold drip ice cube. “The area has been a bit starved of anything new and different, so now we stand out like a sore thumb, trying to create interest in our products,” says Warwick.
The venue is open each day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The café serves Norway’s Tim Wendelboe’s full range of coffees through their Synesso Hydra three-group machine. For their house blend Pure Boutique uses Five Senses’ Harvest Blend, which Warwick describes as “smooth and well-rounded”. Seasonal coffees from Seven Seeds and Barossa Coffee Roasters are also favourites.
Visitors to the Glenelg venue can try a range of alternate brew methods including siphon, aeropress, pour over and filter. The full menu caters to the popular breakfast trend. Popular items include the Norwegian waffles or Hunters Breakfast: free-range eggs on house-made bread with Barossa bacon, and a duck and pork cassoulet.
Pure Boutique’s favourite chalk artwork from a local tattoo artist has reclaimed the new wall space, while new additions include a piano and guitar for live acoustic music acts. “On any day there will be grannies at the front having a latte, young ones drinking siphon coffee and a bunch of blokes drinking beers down the back.”
Biga Café Bar
It’s a family affair at Biga Café Bar where Owner Danny Milky and son Deeb Milky are brewing up a storm for locals. Read more