The Girl in the Café: how Celeste Wong went from coffee lover to Insta-star

When Celeste Wong worked as a barista at Lantana in Fitzrovia, people would stop her in the street and ask where they recognised her from. Then they realised. “I was the girl in the café,” she says.

Wong started an Instagram called The Girl in the Café to share pictures of new drinks, people she’d met and places that her job took her to. She now has nearly 5,000 followers and has recently made a web series about London’s coffee scene. For the launch she served potent coffee cocktails that had been made with vermouth instead of water.

The series is online and shown on Air New Zealand flights. In the first series, Wong, who is also an actress, meets coffee connoisseurs, including Hugh Duffie and Luke Suddard from Sandows, who make nitro brews. In the second she meets the customers and surprises them at the end by asking them to make her a coffee. She says: “There’s a war reporter who works in Afghanistan for Vice. But when I ask him to make me a drink he’s out of his comfort zone.”

The idea came about when Wong was thinking about all the people she meets through her job. “Coffee is more than a drink — it’s about connecting people and is a facilitator for talking and sharing. There’s a huge amount of creativity in the industry. I started drinking coffee as a teenager and liked the conversations we had while drinking it and feeling part of something. Doing something for the internet gives you freedom.”

She rarely has time to drink a whole coffee while working but will have around 20 tastes a day to check the quality. On days off she starts with a long black, made in a v60, AeroPress or cafetière, saying: “I like the clean, pure flavour in the morning, then when I want more texture I have a flat white and in the afternoon I have a piccolo.” She has recently been impressed with a Bonavita eight-cup brewing machine and rarely goes to chains.

She likes natural coffee that has been semi-washed and dried in the sun and her favourite beans are Guatemalan. Climpson & Sons and Square Mile are good suppliers.

She wants to do more podcasts and vlogging and is also running coffee pop-ups. The next is at Clerkenwell Design Week (May 24-26) with the Platform show. She is working with Two Hands Bakery and hopes they will do a menu with food pairings to go with the coffee she chooses.

Wong grew up in New Zealand, which is known for its way with coffee, but she says London is “the place to be” for beans. She lives in east London and says: “The coffee scene is a melting pot, influenced by NZ, Australia and Europe.”

She once tried to detox “and almost passed out”. “After four days it was all right but I really enjoy everything about coffee. There’s nothing like it.”

Follow Celeste on Instagram @the_girl_in_the_cafe