Chief Coffee

Turnham Green Terrace Mews
W4 1QU

020 8994 0636


If we were professional restaurant reviewers, this would be a review of Spring, Skye Gyngell's newish restaurant in Somerset House. We made a rare venture outside the W4 postcode to celebrate 25 years of restaurant reviewing. Or marriage. (Top marriage tip: don't try combining marriage with restaurant reviewing - no cook likes to be told that their muffins are short on blueberries, their tuna is overdone or their hummus could do with more tahini.)

The cooking at Spring is exceptional, an expert mix of flavours and ingredients without being fussy. From the bread to the chocolate truffle nothing missed a beat. We started with burrata with crushed broad beans and peas, purple basil and pea shoots and some asparagus with romesco and crème fraîche. The main courses were wild halibut with spinach, chilli and preserved lemon dressing and grilled lamb with white beans, figs, greens and tapenade. Afterwards we shared an apricot and muscat tart with crème fraîche and a selection of cheese (Cashel Blue, Cantal and Innes Log) with moscato jelly, green almonds and kamut crackers. If you love good food and can't face the journey to Chiswick, then go to Spring.

But we're not professional restaurant reviewers, so let's mark another anniversary: Chief Coffee celebrates one year in Chiswick this week. Situated just off the Terrace in a small mews area behind the Snapdragon toy shop, Chief is based in an old Victorian bottling factory.  Prior to Chief Coffee it housed Isokon Plus - in their words an iconic furniture company, from which many of the furnishings at Chief have come.

Chief has an urban look that feels more Shoreditch than Chiswick. Perhaps that's the Isokon touch. There's a Pinball lounge downstairs with 6 Pinball machines ranging from a 1997 Bally 'Cirqus Voltaire' to a 2015 Stern 'Game of Thrones'.

But don't be put off, these guys take their coffee very seriously. The website description of the machinery sounds like a petrolhead talking about their favourite motorbikes: the matt black EK43 coffee grinder and the clean, slick and sophisticated La Marzocco FB/80 in a custom-white finish. (As any coffee aficionado knows, the FB/80 was manufactured for the 2006 World Barista Championships and named in honour of Giuseppe and Bruno Bambi, the brothers (Fratelli Bambi) who founded La Marzocco in Florence 80 years earlier.)

Chief Coffee was voted Chiswick's second best coffee shop (behind The Coffee Traveller) in the Time Out Love London Awards last November. The coffee is certainly good, and the hot chocolate got a thumbs up from Miss West4urants.



There is a small array of baked goods, from which we tried the ham and cheese croissants, purely in the interests of the blog. Chief Coffee is dog-friendly, but sadly for the dog there were no leftovers.

Food (for 2): £7.00
Drink: £7.50
Total: £15.50