A coffee shop without lattes and pierced baristas? What spiffing good fun, says Richard McComb.

It’s a bitterly cold morning when I meet Tim Penrose and I am wearing a sheepskin hat to prevent frostbite of my scalp.

“You look like Leonid Brezhnev,” says Penrose with a mischievous smile, admiring my head gear.

Which is fine. Because he looks like Bertie Wooster.

Penrose, a gentleman coffee house proprietor, is dressed in waistcoat and tails, sporting a dapper yellow tie. It’s a look that’s very much “suits you, sir” – and it very much suits him.

Penrose was a driving force behind the emergence of Birmingham’s new-look cafe society some 20 years ago, launching the classy Hudson’s, setting the standard for continental coffee, fine teas, scones and delicate sandwiches. He was in Brum before the arrival of frappucinos and skinny lattes, stealing a march on Starbucks and the other brash, corporate interlopers.

The original Hudson’s is still going strong in Colmore Row, to where it moved from the City Plaza in 2002. Penrose originally opened the coffee shop because his wife, Ruth, got fed up with him moaning about poor service in cafes. She told him that if he thought he could do any better, he should open one himself. So he did.

The Colmore Row business was taken over by a colleague of Penrose’s in 2006 and one of the most colourful characters in the city’s hospitality sector disappeared off the warm beverages radar.

But now he’s back, running a new branch of Hudson’s. And there are still no lattes. What a relief: here is coffee you can actually taste. Neither are there baristas brandishing facial piercings. Formal attire is the order of the day for serving staff.

In addition to the coffees, including top grade Kenya AA and Fair Trade Costa Rican, there are speciality teas, served in china teapots, such as Lady Grey and Lapsang Souchong.