The Caffeine Buzz - 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers - page 371

Coffee

415

Bramah Museum of Tea & Coffee
Have a Cuppa
London, England

Here in the land of high tea service, it's
only fitting that you'd find the world's first
museum devoted entirely to the history of
tea and coffee. Founded in 1992 by the
late Edward Bramah, a globe-trotting tea
planter and coffee broker, it's an obses-
sive's delight—a comprehensive look at
the history of tea and coffee.
Granted, England is more often associ-
ated with tea—after all, it was the price of
tea that finally drove its North American
colonists to rebel. But coffee has also had
its day in Great Britain, from the Restora-
tion era of the mid-1700s, when coffee-
houses were essential hangouts for
writers, politicians, and intellectuals (the
famous insurance company Lloyd's of Lon-
don had its humble beginnings in a coffee-
house) down to the trendy espresso bars
of 1950s Soho and modern-day Internet
cafes. China tea sets, complicated coffee
brewing machines, ancient maps, bills of
lading, painted canisters, engravings of
clipper ships, vintage advertising images—
all tell the story of how the British Empire
spread around the globe to India, Ceylon,
Africa, and China in pursuit of tea and cof-
fee. The museum isn't large—after all, this
is a pretty specialized collection—but its
displays do an admirable job of covering a
4-century-long sweep of commercial and
social history.
Naturally, there's a refined pink tea-
room, where the pots of tea are steeped

from leaves instead of teabags, and the
coffee is brewed by the traditional jug
method. Cucumber sandwiches, crum-
pets, and traditional cream teas—with
clotted cream, jam, and scones—are also
available. The adjacent shop also sells
Bramah's own brands of leaf tea and
ground coffee from around the world. The
museum is handily located on the south
bank of the Thames, in a neighborhood of
converted warehouses near Butler's
Wharf, where the great tea ships once
unloaded their cargoes; it's conveniently
close to the Borough Market and to the
George Inn (77 Borough High St.; & 20
7407 2056 ), an old coaching inn which
has preserved its original 17th-century
coffee room, a favored haunt of Charles
Dickens.

40 Southwark St. ( & 44/20/7403 5650;
www.teaandcoffeemuseum.co.uk).
( Heathrow (24km/15 miles); Gatwick
(40km/25 miles).
L $$$ Covent Garden Hotel, 10 Mon-

mouth St., Covent Garden ( & 800/553-
6674 in the U.S., or 44/20/7806-1000; www.
firmdale.com). $$ B + B Belgravia, 64-66
Ebury St., Belgravia ( & 800/682-7808 in
the U.S., or 44/20/7734-2353; www.bb-
belgravia.com).