Where the Coffee comes from at Kingsley House

A shop on Old Compton Street in Soho has sold coffee from the same address since 1887. The counter is original. The shelves are original. The building survived the Blitz when the Admiral Duncan next door and much of the surrounding street did not. Algerian Coffee Stores has outlasted most of what was around it, which tells you something about the quality of what it sells and the people who have sold it.

The shop was founded by an Algerian merchant whose name it still carries, though few records from those early years survived. What remains is a photograph of the founder and his staff, standing in the shop that looks, in its bones, much as it does today.

In 1928 it was sold to a Belgian gentleman named Mr Boerman, who kept the name and kept the coffee. In 1946 it passed to an Englishman called Mr Jones. When Jones died in the late 1970s, the business went to his son-in-law, Paul Crocetta, who came to London from Naples after marrying Jones's daughter, Francesca. Paul and Francesca had two daughters, Daniela and Marisa. Their family runs the shop today.

A stock sheet from the 1940s records coffees from India, Jamaica, Cameroon, Madagascar, Congo and Brazil. The variety available in that shop more than eighty years ago is remarkable. Today's range is even wider, built on the same principle: find the most interesting beans from around the world and put them in front of people who will appreciate them.

The shop has changed in small ways over the decades. There was once a dentist on the first floor, whose sign is visible in wartime photographs. Families lived in the upper floors. The fine wines, the Bordeaux and Burgundy and Madeira and Port that once lined the shelves alongside the coffee, are gone. What remains is the original counter, the original shelves, the character of a shop that has never felt the need to reinvent itself because it never stopped being exactly what it was supposed to be.

Customers come in who remember visiting with their grandparents. They bring their own children. In a city that replaces itself every decade or so, that's no small thing.

The coffee Duncan brings to your door in the morning at the time you asked for the night before comes from Algerian Coffee Stores. It is Brazilian. We chose it because it is the best coffee we could find, and because a shop that has been sourcing exceptional coffee from the same address for nearly 140 years is worth supporting. The counter has not moved since 1887. We find that reassuring.

Algerian Coffee Stores is at 52 Old Compton Street, Soho, London. If you are in the city, it is worth the visit.