Costa Coffee

Same old Same old, average service with a rare smile thrown in here and there.
Average prices for average quality coffee.
The staff are nice but depending on who you get to serve you.
Served by a very abrupt, short and slightly rude young girl.
It’s ok for a quick pit stop, but that’s as far as the excitement goes for this chain of coffee houses.

The coffee servings at Costa Coffee are enormous. The smallest size (primo) is actually rather large, the medium is more of a soup bowl than a mug, while the large is like drinking a bucket of caffeine.
Costa Coffee is a busy, loud café plonked in the middle of the White Water Shopping Centre. As I prefer to give my custom to smaller local cafes, I only come here when I can’t make it outside and I need to recharge the energy levels between bursts of extreme shopping.
On these occasions, I peruse the paper, take out the knitting or simply stick in the iPod and watch the clientele gesture dramatically as they silently converse.
I recently treated myself to a lemon cupcake here, which was divine and so pretty I had to take a picture of it.
My only criticism is that the baristas always ask, «Medium or large?» and I have to quickly remember how to say «small» in Costa-​speak.
I know their game. They want you to have to pay more for the larger cups and you leave a jittery mess ready to shop away all that extra caffeine-​induced energy. In fact, Costa Coffee is probably in cahoots with H&M and HMV and all the other acronymed shopping chains that surround it.
Or maybe I’m just paranoid after the vessel of caffeine I’ve ingested…