Pedzle i Szczotki

This afternoon, G and I hit the town, desperate to find a tiny patch of sunlight in what has been a gloomy world of moody weather for the last million of weeks. We took a stroll through Powisle, the district right along the left riverbank, an old neglected dump of industrial plants and empty tumbleweedplots, which is now becoming an increasingly popular location to splash out your mortgage in. We marvelled at how disused the riverbank is - it is just asking for a neat wooden promenade to be built along it, where all the orange-faced broads could come to display their love-handles and check their reflection in the mirror-glazed sunglasses of the blokes.

Pedzle i Szczotki, a little surprise box of a cafe that we stumbled into today, certainly wouldn't fit into the promenade line-up. It is a cosy little place, housed in a cramped space previously occupied by a store selling and repairing brushes and bristles; hence its name which in Polish means exactly that. G and I had a moment of doubt, studying the modest front carefully, to confirm whether it really was a cafe. I think they might not have even bothered to change the sign announcing the purpose of the original establishment! Thus, most of the first-time guests entering the cafe do so with slightly confused faces of mild disbelief.


I had a nice fluffy milk-frothed latte, and G tried to kick-start his Coyote legs back into action, by his usual treat of a double espresso. This came with a conventional shot of still water, which is nice, though not a very widespread tradition in the glamorous town of Warsaw. However this was evened out by the fact that the water tasted a little of the Vistula, which was evident from G's face. We sipped our drinks, contemplating the uncoventional dimensions of the space, which is very long, tall and narrow, like a conventional pre-war specialty store, complete with creaking woodboards on the floor, and four-metre high ceilings. All this had us dream away in the direction of Portugal, where we will be heading in four weeks, to delve in the jungle of great little coffee spots serving tiny coffee cups with cinammon sticks on the side with which to stir your coffee.


Our attention was caught by the backdoor, leading out on a little patio, on which a group of dreadlocked art students were making themselves comfortable in their plastic chairs, planning their next week's photo shoot. The lovely yellow of this door is my absolute favourite part of the place; it brightens up the dark cramped space, and magically changes it into a secret chamber in which confessions are exchanged over an improbably colourful glass of lemonade.


Pedzle i Szczotki
Tamka 45b
Powisle, Warsaw

Coffee: 3.5 beans
Ambience: 4 beans
OVERALL: 3.5 beans / 5

Dropping Coffee Beans

I have been living in Warsaw for six years now, on and off, and I am continually amazed at how little I know about this city. For the past five New Years Eves, it has been my New Year's Resolution to try and find a handful of things to love about this feeble wrinkled granny of a city, of gnarled hands and feet. She continues to wobble her way through the years, to the astonishment of everyone around. A few decades back, she was not meant to be anymore, but she lived, and has now caught her breath again. Yet, it shall be years before you will be able to appreciate her, without having to always summon the ghost of her former beauty in your head, to patch up the wrinkles and scars.

What I want to do is to dive into the tiniest corners of the wrinkles and creases, to see what excitement I can dig up. I shall be following a path of a fresh coffee roast, fluffy armchair cushions, homemade apple crumbles, and foamy raspberry smoothies. Toting my camera on one arm, and my portable coffee palate on its own two Coyote Australian legs. I shall explore the Warsaw cafe underworld! Let us see if the people of Warsaw know how to sit down over a cuppa, and if so, what happens when they do!

And I shall drop a little coffee bean in every wrinkle and crease that we visit.