HELLOOOO UKRAINE! Where am I? LVIV! Why? Because! Me and two of my beautiful buds Lianne and Laura love to have a weekend together each year anywhere within a few hours flight from London.. this year it was Lviv!

We hadn’t heard of this city before but thought why not, hey? Upon digging into researching this blank slate of a city, we found that Lviv has a good few novelty venues (most of which are coffee or chocolate based) and this is one of them. I’ve accidentally become quite a big coffee fan and this seemed to be the place to go for good coffee and a bit of an experience in Lviv, so off we went.

There’s really one main road and crossroads in this city where everything’s at. Coffee Manufacture sits on the crossroads opposite the Drunken Cherry and from first glance it looks like a cafe. We went in and wandered to find a table then realised we were missing something key… I’d seen online from doing a bit of digging beforehand that they give out mining hats, pretending that they mine coffee here. I asked the waiter and found out we could go downstairs for a completely different experience…

Down we went not really knowing what to expect… it got darker and we could hear someone speaking Ukrainian loudly but it added to our confusion as all we know is loosely how to say thank you and yes. To entertain us on the flight of stairs were a few pickaxes hung on the wall (this was all very dimly lit) and round the corner a man in probably his early 50s gave us all hardhats. We carried on going in single file, all hatted up, and after maybe 30m we hit a cafe.

We were handed menus and, using our phones as torches, weren’t sure what to pick but the speciality here was one of their coffees which involves a load of fire in your face while they caramelise the top of the bev at your table, so we all went for that! We sat and waited, taking hat snaps and checking out the surroundings.. I’m guessing the hats have to be big enough to fit all size so they were pretty loose but I love a random hat so kept it on throughout! The table across from us had their blowtorch flame thrower coffees served and one of the customers left her hat on the table which got a little bit singed.. FOOL! We chuckled then hastily made sure our belongings were clear and under the table!

The coffee showed up in three tin cups and the server lit his blowtorch, and let me tell you they’re not messing around in here! Puffs of fire went across the whole table for a good 20 seconds followed by a close up blue flame blast of the drinks and a couple more big old orange flame wafts at the end for show. We were told to leave the drinks for 2 minutes so they could cool down then we cracked into the caramelised top with spoons. It was pretty much just sugar but delicious! Half the cup was light foamy coffee and the remainder pretty creamy; very nice. You can get cake and other drinks down there but it’s quite dark so I’m not sure you’d be able to see what you’re eating. To be honest we wanted just the novelty fire so it was perfect for us.

We paid up (total cost for 3 was 174UHA/£4.60), took some snaps and wandered through to find a shovel and a pit of coffee beans so had a scoop, gave the hats back to the hat collecting guy and left… through the gift shop, naturally! We came out of the various underground tunnels into a lovely cafe which looked very insta-friendly; glass ceiling, tea cups and saucers hanging from the fancy ironwork.. kind of an outside, but not actually outside, quaint courtyard. We had daylight so we could see what was in front of us this time and sat down (don’t judge, we’d had to walk up a whole flight of stairs) to order some tea and cake. It was a jolly little time there just sitting together chatting crap and consuming more stuff… not much was going on but it looked like a band plays at some point during the day or night. Pretty good.

I’d totally recommend paying this place a visit. It’d go down really well in London though I’m not sure the health and safety aspect of jetting fire over tables would get the thumbs up!

Forked by Stefpuff

Website: www.instagram.com/manufacture.coffee
www.instagram.com/lvivcoffee