I think this might be the finest smelling shop in London. Like its neighbour I Camisa & Son it is a tiny establishment in Old Compton Street, but whereas Camisa’s place is full of cheeses and hams (not unpleasant smells themselves), the Algerian Coffee Stores is floor to ceiling coffee and tea.
Proust may have had his Madeleine cakes to stir his memories, but the smell of freshly roasted coffee here takes me back to my childhood in the North of England. The old fashioned local department store was a classy affair that boasted a wood-panelled tea room where they roasted their own coffee. The smell was gorgeous and the Algerian Coffee Stores transports me back to those times. The ambience very posh for my town. So posh in fact that my grandmother – an old northern matriach who used to take me with her for a treat – dressed up to shop there and always left her best hat on as she supped and fed in the tea room.
I’d always choose a toasted tea cake to accompany my strawberry milk shake (I liked the smell but not the taste of coffee in those days) which was a strange choice as I refused to eat currants. I did , however, like the flavour of the toasted bread soaked with the sweet flavour of the currants. Therein lay my problem. It was a problem that Grandma would solve by picking out each piece of dried fruit with her poor gnarled arthritic fingers for me. Bless her. She would do anything for her little Lord Fauntleroy. Sadly she couldn’t do this very well – it was the gnarled fingers combined with poor eyesight – and the tea cake always looked like a war zone after she’d had a good go at it. But I din’t care; the toasted bread was sweet and lovely.
Sometimes there would be a fashion show in the tea room. A group of younger ladies would parade up and down the tea room, weaving in and out of the tables wearing clothes that were available to buy throughout the store. They were all much younger than Grandma but her eyes would follow them as they strutted their stuff and then she’d theatrically roll the eyes and tut repeatedly out loud when she caught me watching her.
“What are you looking at buggerlugs?” she’d say and make to clip me round the ear before adding. “Would you like another?”
She nodded to what was now just a pile of fluffy currants and a smear of butter where the tea cake had been on my plate.
“Yes please, Grandma,” I’d reply and then kick my legs and take in the smell of the coffee and wait for her to return with my next tea cake.
Ah yes, coffee….back to the Algerian Coffee Stores!
I’ve walked past it hundreds of times on Old Compton Street and I always pop my head through the door and hoover up the magnificant smell. The shop is old fashioned. Walls filled with row upon row of jars filled with the different coffees and teas. A wooden board is marked up with their names and prices.
According to the lady who owns the shop in an interview recorded on Adrian Stern’s Les Enfants Terribles website, Marisa Crocetta, “the store was opened by an Algerian man named Mr Hassan in 1887 – we know nothing of his descendants or what happened to him after he handed the shop over in 1926.”
The shop was bought by a belgian man who ran the store until just after the war. “Algerian Coffee Stores has been in my family since 1948, when my granddad took over. My father, my sister and I are now here,” continued Marisa.
As well as packets of coffee and tea you also can buy a very fine – and very reasonably priced – cup of coffee to take away. If you visit, and I heartily recommend that you do to support this marvellous place, you may find me standing next to you sniffing the air, miles away, daft grin on my faces in rememberance of tea cakes past.
