Today I had lunch with a friend at LLS Cafe in Hampstead Heath , London and paid using Bitcoin Cash.

I heard the cafe was accepting Bitcoin Cash from a post in /r/btc and made a note to check it out to show support and get myself some delicious food using BCH. It's the first time I've paid for something using BCH in a brick and mortar place so this was exciting for me. I've used BCH before to buy things online and have had fun with tippr/ chaintip but nothing in the real world yet.

I'm no photographer so I apologise for the lousy photos! The food was delicious. Super, super healthy. I ordered 'The Squash' which was black rice, butternut squash and pomegranate with flaked almond in a tamari, ginger, lime and sesame oil dressing. My friend ordered 'The Golden One' which was quinoa with baked sweet potato, cauliflower and mix leaves with turmeric in a miso, sesame oil and rice vinegar dressing. I don't normally buy such healthy-sounding food so this was a real treat for me.

When I initially asked to pay using Bitcoin Cash, the waitress was a little confused.

"Cash? Yes we accept cash. And Amex."

When I tried to clarify what I meant, she actually didn't know they were accepting Bitcoin Cash. I explained that I heard the two owners of the cafe had decided to accept it and that I had phoned a week before to confirm this was true. Unfortunately the two owners weren't at the cafe that day. The waitress then explained that yes they might have done that but she hadn't yet been trained on how to accept Bitcoin Cash.

She gave one of the owners a phone call and the owner started walking the waitress through opening the Bitcoin.com wallet to accept my BCH. There ended up being some technical difficulties. The Bitcoin.com wallet wasn't loading and wouldn't show a receiving QR address - I think because of the cafe's internet connection. The waitress then said she wasn't sure if she could accept my BCH as payment because of this. I told her I only came here so I could spend my BCH!

The owner then asked to speak to me directly over the phone. She apologised about all the confusion but she was super excited about accepting BCH, so she said she'd send a QR code from her own Bitcoin.com wallet to the waitress' phone and I could then pay to that address.

"Welcome to the future", I heard her say to me :-)

I knew it wasn't going to be as smooth a process given the novelty of it but all the fuss got me into a conversation with another customer at the cafe. She said, "Wow I can't believe I'm seeing this happening!" and then shared how she was learning about blockchain technology and felt excited about the potential of what it could do. She then asked what the price of Bitcoin was and I explained that I was actually paying with Bitcoin Cash - I tried to give a short explanation of the two forks (although I might need to get better at that). I ended up explaining how there was a ton of politics over scaling and how Bitcoin was designed to disrupt central banks and that it's touching lot of nerves.

In the end I did pay for my lunch and my friend's lunch using Bitcoin Cash. Wahoo!

If you are anywhere near Hampstead Heath in London, do check the cafe out. It's fairly small with space for about a dozen people to eat in. You can find their menu on their website and here's their location on google maps .

I believe they also decided to hold BCH directly rather than convert it straight to fiat, so that's a plus in my opinion. I also didn't see any " Bitcoin Cash Accepted Here" stickers so if you do go and have some stickers I'm sure they'd be happy to stick them up.

Hopefully my short story will encourage some of you to support any businesses accepting BCH local to you. There's nothing behind the paywall but any tips will get me more of those vegan energy balls, or a yummy slice of cake ;-)

-Liam