This is a nice enough place but I found it disappointing. It clearly has its fans from the other…read morereviews here, but perhaps it succeeds due to lack of competition in the centre of the city. Yes, there's Costa and Starbucks but they're pretty much of a muchness with Moka quality and service wise.
What Preston lacks is a first class independent third wave coffee shop/diner, where quality of product and service is genuinely high. Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, York, Bath, Birmingham, London, and the rest have several. Preston seems to have zero and so there's no incentive for shops like Moka to be exceptional. This is a shop that's cruising in my view.
I specifically detoured to check out Moka. It is part wannabe brand and part up market tea shop in style. I ordered a flat white which was pretty horrible: wrong size, way too hot, bitter as a result, with no depth of flavour at all. I struggled to finish it. This is a training issue, a machine cleanliness issue and a bean quality issue.
The 'barista' banged out the old coffee puck, didn't clean the portafilter, ground new coffee into it (what looked like a single rather than flat white double shot), left the portafilter on the side while he did something else, letting it cool, then returned. The watery shot told me the machine/grinder wasn't calibrated properly and nor was the barista. There is no reason to churn out this standard other than laziness and lack of training. I can get this kind of coffee anywhere. Yuk!
I next ordered a strawberry cheesecake. I watched it being sliced. OK, so don't wipe your hands down your trousers first to dry them. Don't then handle the slice with your fingers leaving a print. And when you slice don't leave a 1cm nub in one corner. Cut it neatly. So a potentially cross contaminated slice, ill cut with a finger mark, is £3.95. The mango squeezable out of a bottle stuff I dunno what that was about ... with strawberry?
Service was Ok. Polite enough. It was all a bit haphazard tho and seemed over staffed when all that's happening is cake, tea, coffee out front. There did seem to be a kitchen out back and I saw a few things come out looking par for the course. Nothing too exciting. I couldn't check the menu for more info as it was snatched from the table as soon as I said I didn't want food. Why do that? Someone will only go back and replace it when I leave!
So, this is an average place for people who want average at a tad above average prices in a convenient location near the station. Preston will do better at some stage hopefully.
