Caffeine Scene
A ‘speciality coffee’ bar has opened in St Leonards. TESSA BOASE meets the man behind Chucky’s Baristro
Cagri ‘Chucky’ Turan is a busy man, fielding calls from equatorial coffee farmers, zipping between roasteries in Wiltshire and Lewes and obsessively polishing coffee machines in outlets on the Sussex coast. “I›m starting at four o’clock every morning. I›m finishing at eight o’clock every evening. The hours are not enough for me,” he says, briskly swirling my ‘house blend’ around a fine, ceramic cup before adding Northiam Dairy milk in velvety laps. I’m in Chucky’s Baristro on King’s Road – his latest, most anticipated venture.
Bexhill and Brighton came first, but a £10k rent hike in Brighton pushed this irrepressible entrepreneur further east. After circling for three years, he swooped on Kings Road: a pocket-sized coffee bar with a DJ playing tunes, perfect for day trippers and locals alike. But does Kings Road need yet another coffee outlet?
Walk in, and you’ll see that Chucky’s Baristro is different. There are tasting notes on the two coffee mills, with a seasonally changing offer (‘rum raisin, hazelnut, marmalade, peach, nougat, Fanta, black tea…’). You can read about the Peruvian or Colombian farm that produced the beans, its altitude, the process. “It was upsetting me that everybody was getting good coffee in London, in big cities,” says Chucky. “Why not in small towns? I knew I was the right person to show everyone what really good coffee tastes like.”
The door swings open. “Two vanilla lattes to go,” says a woman. Chucky suppresses a small shudder. “It’s just business for me,” he shrugs. “But I know this person doesn’t understand coffee.” All this is about to change. “I’m here to take people on a journey. I’m going to be introducing you to different tastes, to the coffees next in season.” Some customers will visit just once for a vanilla latte, others – locals? – will get on board for the journey.
Chucky’s unique offer is ‘speciality coffee’, a product he controls from cherry to cup. His beans are grown by small producers in Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda. “I follow the season cycle of the farmers, who play a big part in our coffee story,” he tells me. The beans are treated to different processes, such as the limited edition ‘Juicy Berries’, created by a 24-year-old coffee farmer in Colombia who ferments the fruits for 72 hours. It has an intriguing flavour: tart with red berries, sweet with a hint of white chocolate, no syrups added.
How did his passion for coffee start? Chucky was born in Hamburg in 1985 to German-Turkish parents who ran a food store that came with a roaster. One day a customer came in and pointed out that, rather than nuts, the machine in the corner was meant for roasting coffee beans. Chucky, nine years old, was listening. He started experimenting, first with Turkish coffee, then Italian. Moving to London in 2009 “for love”, (Petra, a Slovakian, is now his wife), he opened his first small outlet in Fulham.
But he still didn’t understand speciality coffee, serving instead Lavazza, Illi & co, the strong, roasted Italian flavours we associate with coffee. Then Chucky met a professional, a Swedish woman who gave him “a juicy, nutty coffee from El Salvador,” complete with its story of origin. It was his moment of epiphany. “There – then – that was the moment I understood coffee.”
Five years later, and he’s running a company built entirely around speciality coffee. It’s a one-stop-shop, offering everything from superb blends to the best equipment, barista training to masterclasses in latte art. “If your coffee is bad, latte art doesn’t mean anything!” he exclaims. Alex, his Kings Road barista, agrees. “I’ve learned so much,” she says. “I used to overheat the milk. Now I know to test the heat on the palm of my hand, spin the coffee in the cup, spin the milk to make it shiny, tap the jug to get rid of the bubbles. Before, I’d never given a thought to what I was serving. Now I’m trying to learn about coffee production.”
At 39, Chucky is also still learning. “Coffee is a craft,” he explains. “It’s always changing.” Now we can join him on that journey.
Chucky’s Baristro, 57 Kings Road, St Leonards on Sea TN37 6DY, 6am-4pm. @chuckysbaristro
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