Milk No Sugar

Looking for great Vietnamese food you can eat at your desk? Look no further, my friends.
This place has great big pots of home made Phở, pâté spread Banh Mi with crunchy rolls, creamy yet light (whaaat) curry at the perfect heat and a wonderful, substantial, crunchy, juicy Vietnamese salad.
Yes, so we tried everything they had to offer, don’t judge us. It was all so tempting!
The people running it are chatty, sweet and lovely and keen to please. Everyone I was with loved it and praised it all. It’s a really great little place, run with love and care.

Located not far the station this place offers some interesting hipster comfort food (such fish finger sandwiches). There are also quite a lot of thai soups on offer. Apart from the fish finger sandwiches I have tried the halloumi burger, which was tasty but a bit messy to eat due to a slight excess of mayonnaise. The place looked better when I first visited but now looks of a mess near the counter area. The staff are nice enough and some of them are Asian should you want to try their soups and other thai/​korean offerings.

The perfect location to grab a coffee after you’ve hopped off the train and are en-​route to the Lanes. (Under the bridge, walk down the hill for 30 seconds and its on your left).
Hugo and Cameron are super-​friendly and are always happy to talk you through their latest creations, from peanut butter honey latte thingies to their ever-​growing array of fragrant teas. A latte costs £2.50 (Dec. 2014) and they do lunch deals on paninis etc. Their menu changes depending on the season — at the moment they are doing Vietnamese Phở to warm the cockles!
I like that Milk no Sugar are community focussed; they often play host to various local meet-​up groups in the evenings and they also showcase and sell local artists’ artwork (over the last couple of months they held William Blood and Cassette Lord exhibitions). They are dog-​friendly too :)

A great coffee shop with unusual options (peanut butter honey latte?! yum!) that still has some minor niggles. I’ve had the food as well which I enjoyed (a lentil soup) but wouldn’t write home about but was healthy and filling. They have outlets near the back and almost always have room so that you can feel comfortable working on your laptop. I also always see bicycles parked behind the door so I think you could leave yours there as well! But they do have an open chill cabinet and also leave the door open, which is great in the summer but just really cold in the winter (and pretty soon working on your laptop gets to be much harder because your hands are getting too cold…). Also one time I saw the staff (not the really awesome owner guy, who is great by the way!) completely dissappear and customers came in, waited for a minute, and just turned around and left because the staff lady was nowhere to be found. I do see them hosting some political activist meetings as well and staying open late for that, which I find really cool and charming. Anyway, I’d definitely recommend it in the summer, but I think it’s too cold if you were planning to camp out there for any length of time in the winter.

This is a fab little independent café near the station. Run by a quality obsessed Asian chap, don’t be put off by the two group la marzocco linea. He can make it sing. Red brick by square mile, through a mazzer jolly. Definitely better than the rather slack Taylor st barista up the road. One star knocked off for variability of the weight of my double espresso. Both nice, but totally different shot sizes. Due to there being another barista in the café on Sunday. Open evenings. Recommended, and I mostly drink coffee at present, peleton and the association, as well as curators, all city of London and spitalfields.