It’s a shame that Curtis & Bell closed – their patisserie selection was fantastic, and their cheery exterior brightened up North Street. At the start of April 2016, however, Tincan Coffee Co. rose from the ashes to take C&B’s place at no. 234, serving coffees, cakes, sandwiches, salads and more.
The new North Street shop is the first bricks and mortar premises for Adam White and Jessie Nicolson, whose brand began life in 2011 after restoring their first 1969 Citroen HY van, pimping it up to serve a new purpose as a mobile coffee shop. Since then, they’ve built up a fleet of vans which keep people well caffeinated at events and festivals including Shambala, Goodwood, Wilderness and more.
With the shop, the Tincan Coffee team are staying true to their roots, serving specialist and seasonal coffees from Clifton Coffee and guest roasters, but adding salads, savouries, sandwiches, cakes, smoothies and more to the mix. A recent midweek, mid-morning visit saw me lucky to get a table – it’s proving to be a popular place already.
Everything about the interior is big and bold, from the diamond design on the tiling both on and behind the counter to the occasional bright teal wall; from the wooden panels adorning the walls at the back of the restaurant to the American diner-esque backlit drinks menu displayed behind the counter. Brown and red leather seats sit at plain wooden tables, and the lighting’s pretty great too, including sunken spotlights in the ceiling, low hanging huge orange lampshades above the counter, hanging spots at different heights above the tables at the front of the coffee shop, and multi-filament bare bulbs hanging from red wires at the back. It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the design of the place.
A varied selection of cakes, pastries, sandwiches and fruit and yoghurt pots are displayed both on the counter and in a built-in chiller cabinet, and it’s great to see options that are different to the norm: on the sandwich front, there were choices such as tuna mayo with olives and roasted red onions, guacamole with pomegranate seeds, and bacon and egg with paprika mayonnaise all available on the day of my visit.
The real test, though, was the coffee. I only drink decaf, and the quality’s so variable across Bristol: a number of coffee shops see decaf very much as an afterthought, and save the good stuff for their fully caffeinated customers. At Tincan, the coffee is a real focus, as you’d expect: everything is roasted to order in small batches by Clifton Coffee, and you’ll even see the odd guest roast on the menu too (when I visited it was the Ignacio Quintero from Cauca in Colombia).
My decaf skinny latte (£2.50 – no extra charge for decaf either) was served in a thick, chunky cup – the milk had a beautiful foam and the coffee itself had faint banana notes – it tasted fantastic, and was served at a decent strength, unlike other Bristol decaf-serving coffee shops that shall not be named…
There’s also a loyalty card scheme in place, allowing you to enjoy your 8th coffee free after collecting 7 stamps.
It’s great to see Tincan Coffee on North Street – while it’s a very “foodie” road, coffee isn’t one of its major strengths. Judging by its popularity on the day of my visit, though (and by peering inside when walking past later on in the week), decent coffee is something that the people of Southville are more than happy to now have on their doorstep. Recommended.