Watchhouse has added to its ever-growing empire of coffee houses with a new flagship on the north bank of the Thames. Set at the entry to the Millennium Bridge, it’s continuing what founder and CEO Roland Horne calls “the Aesop approach to coffee” – considered and design-forward. The location, between Tate Modern and St Paul’s Cathedral, is a true people magnet. “Around 12 million visitors will walk past its doors each year”, says Horne, who opened the first Watchhouse in 2014 in Bermondsey and has since expanded the brand to New York and the UAE, as well as almost 20 locations across London.
Thanks to Horne’s unusual background in luxury aquarium architecture, Watchhouse coffee shops are synonymous with beautiful design – and the new Millennium Bridge house is no exception. The space, designed by Cake Architecture (A Bar With Shapes for a Name, Arc Canary Wharf), is rooted in emotion and the local area. Known for its romantic approach, Cake has tapped into the feeling of the area: the river’s ebb and flow, the changing light and city energy, taking inspiration from Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Brume. Its striking dropped ceiling pays homage to the baroque beauty of the St Paul’s dome, while warm timber and sleek aluminium panels bring visual contrast, nodding to the industrial design of nearby Tate Modern.
Watchhouse’s signature coffee menu will be served in the space, with seasonal espresso and a filter programme. And it will be a site of pilgrimage for coffee lovers thanks to its Rarities menu. “Rarities are where we showcase the rarest distinctive, small-volume coffees,” says Horne. “It is where we serve the most exceptional coffees we are working with at any given time, often produced in tiny volumes and rarely seen outside competition or origin.”
On that menu you might find single origins from Colombian producer Fernando Bocanegra or Ecuador’s Pepe Jijón. These beans are frozen to preserve their peak flavour profile and brewed in-house as pour-overs. The flagship is also serving Watchhouse’s iced Rarities coffee menu: “Rather than treating it as a secondary menu item, we select coffees that genuinely shine when served over ice.”
Unlike some other Watchhouses, this outpost doesn’t have a brunch menu. Instead, it’s all about the bakery. There’s banana bread and cardamom buns, as well as a chocolate and sea salt cookie, which was developed in New York by Carlos Barbosa, the brand’s head baker.
Watchhouse Millenium Bridge
Unit 1B, One Millennium Bridge, EC4V 4AU
Hours:
Daily 7am–7pm
