La Brioche

You'll walk past this place a hundred times if you live round here, but once you actually duck in, you get it. La Brioche is the kind of café that feels like it's been on this corner forever—all parquet flooring and a genuine French vibe that doesn't try too hard. The crowd's a proper mix: locals grabbing espresso before work, tourists who've stumbled off the museum trail, art students from the nearby colleges. Breakfast is proper—croissants that actually taste like butter and air, not that dense stuff you get everywhere else. Coffee's good enough that you'll come back for it alone.