An unexpected look at industrial England 🇬🇧

“It’s not a rich city, but our culture and pride make it one of the best city break destinations I can think of.”

— Michael Davies, Liverpool, England

To the occasional visitor, there are two Englands: London (which is not so much England), and the stone towns and green pastures of Tolkien and Austen. Often overlooked are the mid-sized cities which made the vanguard of the Industrial Revolution. Liverpool, a major port two centuries ago, is one of these, and on one of its cobbled streets in a building as old as its heyday, Michael Davies and Nat Southern created COFFI.

Michael’s Filter guide to Liverpool made me want to book the next flight not to LHR but to whatever the airport code for Liverpool is.

Filter: What do you like to do for fun around Liverpool?

Liverpool has really good food and drink, but also great scenery. When we’re free, we’re normally either in a friend’s bar or restaurant, or at one of the beaches nearby the city.

On the weekends, brunch at Bakesale is always great—and if we can, follow it up with a lazy afternoon in Black Lodge Brewing’s taproom, especially if the sun’s out. Thurstaston, Meols, and West Kirby are the beaches we normally take our kid and the dog to.

COFFI is located in a ‘converted 18th century, Grade II-listed coach-house on a cobbled Liverpool backstreet,’ says co-founder Michael Davies. Photo courtesy of COFFI

Filter: What are your favorite places there?

Liverpool is small enough to walk around entirely, which is great as you can really get a good feeling of the place. Our two favourite areas of the city are the Georgian Quarter, where COFFI is located, and the docks/Baltic Triangle area by the waterfront.

The Georgian Quarter is famous for its two cathedrals—one Anglican and one Catholic—which are both free to get into and our shop sits in between. It’s also known to have the best pubs in the city, and we’re big fans of The Grapes, Ye Cracke, and The Pilgrim. If we’re eating in the Georgian Quarter, more often than not we’ll be in Buyers Club—they have a really good pasta menu.

The Albert Dock nowadays is a great mix of locals and tourists, with genuinely good food & drink options. If we’re eating down there we’ll normally go to Maray, who do amazing Middle Eastern inspired sharing plates in the style of Le Marais, Paris, followed up by a pint in The Baltic Fleet.

Beatles fans are obviously always drawn to Liverpool—there’s really no need to accommodate especially for them though as their history is pretty much everywhere you look. John Lennon was a regular in Ye Cracke and supposedly took Cynthia there on their first date.

If we’re looking for good wine we’ll head to Bunch or Ropes & Twines (Ropes are another multi-roaster cafe who always have good coffee on, too).

Filter: What do you like to do to get out of town?

The Georgian Quarter can feel both like its own small town and part of the city at the same time. There are so many narrow, cobbled streets you can tuck yourself away on, often with a pint. We’re very lucky to be serving coffee where we are.

Outside of the city, we’re drawn to Sefton Park, where we used to live, as well as all of the beaches on The Wirral, just over the water.

If you’re heading over the water, I definitely recommend getting the ferry from the Pier Head over to Birkenhead - from there, you can get the train easily to West Kirby, New Brighton, Hoylake and Meols—all of their seafronts are great. If you’re driving, head to Parkgate for ice cream from Nicholls, who have been going for over 80 years now.

Filter: What touristy things in Liverpool are worth the hype?

Liverpool’s two cathedrals are definitely worth anyone’s time! The Albert Dock is also very good—once Liverpool’s busiest port, it was abandoned until the 80s when it was renovated as a tourist attraction. Now it’s home to thousands and is great for food and drink.

The urinals in The Philharmonic Pub are pink marble, and have listed building status on par with Buckingham Palace!

Filter: Where are your favorite green spaces?

Just outside of the city centre sits both Sefton Park and Princes Park—they’re almost on top of each other. Between them is Lark Lane, which has lots of good options for coffee, food, and drink. You could spend a great afternoon wandering the two parks, followed by a pint in The Albert on Lark Lane. Fritto on Smithdown Road (in the same area) [is] one of our favourite places for authentic Italian street food! Luca is known for his panzerotti but it's the arancini and suppli we can't get enough of.

We’re lucky in Liverpool to have so much on our doorstep, but also to be so close to amazing nature. We both have family in the Lake District, and so often pile into the car to head up there. It’s always incredible how much inspiring scenery you can see within an hour’s drive.

Drive for 30 minutes in the other direction, and you’re in North Wales—equally beautiful, with a lot of shared history. During Liverpool’s boom as a port city, as much as 10% of the population were Welsh immigrants, and our Welsh spelling of COFFI is a nod to that.

Filter: What's another coffee shop around there that you really admire, and what about them stands out to you?

We’re big fans of Ropes & Twines on Bold Street. As a multi-roaster shop they have good variety, and across their coffee and wine offering it’s all really strong. They really welcomed us into the Liverpool coffee scene when we opened and they’re all good mates.

Filter: If you could move to any place in the world just for the coffee scene, where would you move, and what shop would be the biggest reason?

We love city breaks across Europe—in particular Copenhagen, where quality is truly appreciated not only in coffee but pretty much anything—but we’d move back to Bucharest for the coffee any day. It’s the best coffee city in Europe for us—there are shops you can geek out in, and beautiful locations you can enjoy for hours.

Our favourite shop in Bucharest is Bandit, and whenever we’re in town it’s where we head to immediately. Cosmin’s absolute commitment to taste, repeatability, and quality is inspiring and I don’t think we’ll ever see it topped. Other shops we love in Bucharest and highly recommend are Two Minutes, Artichoke, VanFruct, and Bob.

Filter: What makes Liverpool feel most like home to you? Why do you think that is?

Liverpool’s history as an immigrant port city means it doesn’t really feel English—or even British—and people from Liverpool are really proud of that. We’ve both moved away from Liverpool multiple times, visited as tourists, and have always found strong reasons to move back. Now we’re settled here with our son Seb, it’s our family and friends that really make it feel like home.

Monetarily it’s not a rich city, but our culture and pride make it one of the best city break destinations I can think of. We as a city owe a huge amount to the EU in terms of regeneration over the past 30 years, and I think that makes it feel like the most European city in the UK. Most from the city either have Irish heritage, Welsh, or both—the city thrived from immigration and that continues to this day.

Filter: How did you end up in the Liverpool coffee scene?

I’m originally from The Wirral, just over the River Mersey from Liverpool, and Nat’s from Garston, in South Liverpool. Despite us both living in other cities in the UK as well as abroad before we met, we both ended up living in Liverpool City Centre when we met almost a decade ago now.

In 2017 we moved to Bucharest, Romania, for work (I also do work in the games industry) and quickly got used to the incredible multi-roaster cafe scene there. When we moved back to Liverpool in 2019, we missed the variety we had on our doorstep back in Bucharest—and so selfishly decided to open the exact sort of shop we missed going to in Bucharest. Fortunately there are others in Liverpool that also enjoy it!

Filter: Can you share about your role at COFFI?

Nat and I are the co-founders of the shop. We had no cash and no funding, so we took out a small start-up loan and did as much as we could ourselves.

It was very much a bare-bones shop refurb and open, with complete focus on serving coffee. When we took the site, it was a garage—there was one plug socket, no water, no drainage, and no bathroom. Most of our budget was blown just on the core services we needed, with just enough left over for a machine.

We converted an 18th century, Grade II-listed coach-house on a cobbled Liverpool backstreet into a coffee shop, opening in spring 2021.

Filter: What’s a Grade II-listed coach-house?

In the UK, buildings of historical and architectural significance are protected under the listing system to ensure they are preserved for future generations. Our site is Grade II-listed, meaning it's of special interest and importance due to its age (it's a couple of hundred years old). Originally, the building was home to the horses that powered the carts owned by the resident of the next street. In more recent years it was a car park and garage, and we went through planning control to convert it into a coffee shop.

Listed status means there are restrictions on what changes can be made to the building—interior/exterior alterations, building materials and methods, obtaining listed building consent before performing works, etc. For the shop itself this wasn't a problem for us as we wanted to retain as much of the building as we possibly could! However, it adds time and cost—both to obtain consent, and then perform the works in keeping with the existing building (e.g. using lime mortar instead of cement). It took longer to get the paperwork than it did to turn it from a garage into a coffee shop!

Filter: What is rewarding about your work there?

The shop exists to improve the lives of those around us—the people that work with us in the shop, our customers, and the suppliers we buy from—and that’s what’s most rewarding. The coffee is the vehicle that allows us to do that. We try our utmost to be good neighbours, only buy fully-traceable coffee from roasters that share our values, and pay above the independently-set Real Living Wage.

Back when we first opened we had no colleagues, and so it was Nat and I behind the machine all day, every day. We’re lucky to have been able to grow since then, and so whilst we’re still often seen pulling shots, these days I tend to help more behind the scenes and get to enjoy the shop as a customer! We have an amazing, small team who work at the shop who deserve so much credit for the culture they’ve been instrumental in building.

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The Liverpool airport code is LPL.

COFFI is a multi-roaster cafe located in Liverpool, England.

Food & Beverage