The Authoritarian Bean Regime - A Kapow Coffee Review

I came across Kapow Coffee by accident last year while visiting the bookshop across the Arcade. The quaint size and eclectic decoration in the café made me feel like I stepped into a fairytale rabbit’s burrow. I ordered my usual iced latte with oat milk, despite the frigid temperatures outside. Then, my eyes focused on a humongous cookie with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles. I ordered it without a second thought. Perfectly doughy on the inside and crunchy on the outside, it was everything I wanted.  Maybe it was just the fact that my latte came with a sticker of a teddy bear frolicking through fields on it, but I sipped it down and ate my cookie feeling ridiculously satisfied, thinking to myself, “I have just found an absolute hidden gem”.

This year, Kapow was named in the 100 best coffee shops in Europe list. Upon revisiting my secret spot almost a year later, I increasingly found it less fairytale and more imperiously cosmopolitan. I suppose they have committed themselves to embodying a more European coffee culture.

I ordered a hot oat milk latte and was met with the store’s objection to flavoured coffee syrups. They explained, “If we were to mask [our coffee] with flavoured syrups, it can undermine the work we have done, and the roasters we buy from.” I can attest that the notes in my latte were exceptionally nutty and chocolatey despite the flavour coming entirely from the bean. I love a sweet, seasonal latte as much as anyone, but from time to time, it is worth letting your taste buds do the work, sorting out the subtle undertones of the espresso bean.

I spied a berry crumble in the pastry case that proved itself to be moist, dense, and delicately sweet. The baked goods are made by Kapow’s very own private baker, Nat, off-site and are mostly plant-based. Weekend specials are occasionally sourced from Leeds-based bakery Hong Kong Bakery.

While the first floor was still comfortingly eclectic, I discovered a second floor that I previously had no idea existed. I walked up the stairs with anticipation and carried a mug topped with perfect latte art instead of a teddy bear sticker. My berry crumble was already half-eaten. The second floor received a surprising amount of light, with a huge window looking into Thornton’s arcade to form a homely, perfectly crowded space anyone could spend hours in. The café attracted a more mature crowd, men with moustaches and women with micro-bangs. I looked around to see patrons engaged in refreshingly prehistoric activities, like scribbling in their tiny notebooks, reading their pamphlet-sized books, or staring around the room with only their thoughts to entertain them. The moustached man sitting across from me was the same type of man to read Little Women at the bus stop. While easy to scoff at, this genre of self-consumption allowed me to completely let go and devour what was left of my crumble like nobody was watching. I feel like I could draw on the walls here and they would not judge me. Judgment is reserved for the people who ask what kind of syrups they have, coming from experience.

The second floor of Kapow is perfect for summoning your evasive sense of creativity and practicing the art of being somewhere for nobody but yourself. I would highly recommend doing arts and crafts up there. They have a passionately enforced laptop ban: “It’s a coffee shop, not a workspace. Stop working for once and relax with a coffee.” I admire their confidence to take the reins and say, ‘we know what’s best for you’, because they are right. I would not be mad if they banned phones too.

Only someone who has dedicated their livelihood to respecting beans could curate a space with such a commanding yet nurturing energy. Of course, this experience depends on whether you are willing to comply with their explicit and implicit house rules.

Behind their authoritarian culture, they stick to their beans, do what they know, and love what they do. I find there to be nothing worse than a café or bakery that tries to do everything, follow every trend, and appeal to every customer. Kapow is not trying to steal the customers of Blank Street; they are not begging university students to bring everyone they know and take up every seat, and they are not trying to be bakers themselves. Instead, they highlight the honesty of their beans, craft exceptional lattes, welcome people who need a place to relax and forget about their work, and hire a baker to make treats exclusively for them.

Signing off the Instagram post announcing their inclusion in the ‘Best Coffee in Europe’ title was a special expletive reserved for the big, evil coffee corporations of the world. If you visit Kapow in Thornton’s Arcade, let go and let someone else tell you how to enjoy your coffee for a day. If you are tired of having coffee shops constantly suck up to you and give in to your darkest impulses, they will set you straight.

Words by Lindsey Sheppard, she/her