Mother is that friendly neighbourhood spot you have found, hidden just around the corner, full of regulars who know each other’s names, that does great coffee and good eggs all day.
A coffee shop on the ground floor of a building called Tea Factory. But look past the irony and you may have just stumbled on one of the best coffee shops in Liverpool. Jane and Wayne – not only do their names rhyme and they are partners in business but they’re also partners in real life. In 2016 they had their first child and felt it right to name it Mother Espresso. And that motherly nature transfers right over into the experience. Mother Espresso are obsessive about the process of preparing things to eat and drink from scratch. From pickles to flat breads, jams to ketchup, coffee liqueur to cakes – everything is that bit more special because it’s been made that day.
The Tea Factory is a co-working space run by Urban Splash in a converted tea house. Although Mother Espresso commands far more of a presence than the usual coffee shop in a co-working space deal usually permits, with a standalone main entrance on Wood Street. The space is large, it has high ceilings, the walls are whitewashed, the entrance is all glass which means it’s flooded with natural light. Downstairs, inadvertently, has also become somewhat of a co-working space. Apple paraphernalia, journals with scruffy scribbles of to-do lists and business meetings often take place and it’s a freelancers dream. We regularly struggle to control our excitement over the amount of plugs.
Sounds like a pretty dreamy place so far, right? And we haven’t even mentioned the coffee and food. Which still, after regular visits, always surprises us how good it is. Usually coffee shops concentrate on either coffee or food, rarely are both knockouts. There’s always a a choice of 2 seasonal single origin espressos, batch brews, cold brews, nitro coffee, flat whites – and just about anything you can imagine. You haven’t lived until you’ve dunked a millionaire shortbread into a Mother Espresso flat white. The food menu is exciting home cooking using minimal ingredients with maximum flavours that changes seasonally. It changes often but we can’t get enough of the cauliflower banh mi or the BLAT (bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato), a serious upgrade on a BLT.
