You might walk right past Paper Cup if you weren't looking out for it. Nestled next to the Stanmore Cellars, the wee café is a destination for the adventurous and the observant. In his latest venture, café creator Adriano Matteoni has opted for an industrial mood with rough-hewn concrete and exposed brick contrasted with super-slick furnishings.
In spite of the stark interior, Paper Cup is very welcoming. There are only a handful of menu items to choose from, each with a Middle Eastern twist, but they cover a full range of tastes. For a quick snack the fried egg and prosciutto sandwich with harissa mayo is ridiculously tasty, though we don't recommend this choice for a first date - yolk is an unpredictable beast that may leave you with egg literally on your face. The Bahrat baked beans with haloumi and chilli labne is served in a mammoth jar – the mixed beans are in a slightly sweet and spicy sauce, ideal for the kinds of hunger you might get from mustering cattle. The haloumi comes mixed in with the beans but it might have worked better on the side.
We top it all off with a shot of the cold-drip coffee - it tastes the way freshly ground coffee smells - made by dripping icy water over the grounds for 22 hours. The barista assured us that it was actually quite low in caffeine, which was lucky as their standard latte kicked like a glorious, life-giving mule. It may have taken a while for the café revolution to get to Stanmore but it finally made it and judging from the grateful faces of Paper Cup's customers, not a minute too soon.