Blog
Top 10 Coffee Shops in London
Antipodean know-how and joviality invigorate the landscape for the top 10 coffee shops in London. Baristas from New Zealand and Australia transform waves of rich espresso and smoothly textured steamed milk into lattes so velvety you can barely see a bubble. Two Kiwi...
Hats off to Gwilym Davies – 2009 World Barista Champion
Whenever in London you can congratulate 2009 British and now World Barista Champion Gwilym Davies in person – and have a great coffee while you're at it. Gwilym pulls his award-winning shots from an espresso cart parked at the Whitecross Street Market on weekdays...
The perils of trickle-down gastronomics
Subsequent to the naming of the World's 50 Best Restaurants, awards judge and Guardian food critic Jay Rayner makes a courageous case for haute cuisine in down times: ...just as with the very highest of high fashion, the highest of haute gastronomy eventually filters...
Best hot salt beef sandwich in London?
UPDATE: VERY SORRY TO REPORT THE NOSH BAR HAS CLOSED FOR BUSINESS. UpTHE NOSH BAR is back in lights on Great Windmill Street and that alone is cause for celebration, if not a detour from New York, Newcastle or even New Oxford Street. But wait: surprise of surprises,...
The Guardian’s Matthew Norman is either derelict or diabetic in his duties
My first objection to Norman's review of The Crown Inn in the London commuter county of Buckinghamshire may sound like a quibble, but it does illustrate his propensity to base his pronouncements on thin evidence. He samples but two of the mains on offer (6 on the menu...
Mystery of Algerian coffee solved
10:20 am, April 10, Nude Espresso, Hanbury St., London:  A fellow cafenatic admires the proportions of his flat white (what New Zealanders and Australians call their less-milky latte). He laments that lattes back home in Eastern Europe are whipped-cream-topped...
Macchiato at Milk Bar – Soho, London
Beigel Bake’s salt beef as rubbery as ever
If I can prevent just one of Brick Lane's nocturnal foragers from yielding to the temptation of a Beigel Bake hot salt beef sandwich my move from New York to London will have proven a success. I appreciate that the Beigel Bake is a London institution, a revered relic...
Iced coffee made with real coffee. How radically authentic is that?
As you can see from this enticing sign outside its Shoreditch (London) location, apostrophe, the UK café, which, according to its website, "fuses authentic boulangerie-patisserie food with a strong café culture and a modern, cosmopolitan environment," now makes its...
Gibraltar, San Francisco’s cult coffee, comes to London
Could you fall for a coffee that's shorter than a latte but taller than a macchiato (an espresso "marked" with a spoonful of milk foam)? Many of us have, more of us will. In Milan, the caffè marocchino – essentially a mini-cappuccino dusted with cocoa– has risen to...
