The Victoria sponge was light and airy, just the right jam-to-cream ratio to lift this simplest of cakes into something special. Best of all, the coffee was short and strong, still something worth remarking upon in England, where the tea is always brewed to perfection but coffee can be a watery affair.
One would expect nothing less from the Grand Café on Oxford’s High Street, the site of England’s first coffee house in 1650.
Its interior of mirrors and marble evokes an earlier time. Plaques on the wall describe how the site merited a mention in the works of Samuel Pepys, whose famous diaries describe a world of educated men discussing current affairs in the “penny universities,” as coffee houses became known.
There’s just one problem. Take a seat in front of the picture windows, and the eye is drawn past the double-decker buses outside to a chalkboard across the street. “We are the oldest est. coffee house in Europe,” reads the sign outside the Queen’s Lane Coffee House.
The server spots my gaze. “People who sit here, here, and here,” she says, pointing at pretty much half the room, “always look across and ask.”
No need to ask. It comes tumbling out. The Queen’s Lane Coffee House was established in 1654, she continues. And although it doesn’t claim to be the first, it does claim to be the longest continually working coffee house.
“I don’t know how that’s possible,” she grumbles. “Coffee houses were banned at one time.”
The rivalry is about more than local bragging rights. England’s coffee houses shaped a chunk of global history. They were a driver of innovations from the media to stock exchanges. Lloyd’s of London, the insurance house, grew out of Lloyd’s Coffee House, an establishment popular with sailors, merchants, and shipowners.
That sort of independent thinking was perceived as a threat by some. In 1675, King Charles II issued a proclamation shutting down the industry to protect against “Disturbance of the Peace and Quiet of the Realm.”
But his proclamation was overturned before it could be enforced, and England’s coffee houses continued their rise for another century.
That wasn’t enough to save the Grand Café. “This place was turned into a jam factory,” said the server. And a bitter rivalry rumbles on to this day.
