COFFEE
You only have to turn the corner to stumble across yet another coffee shop declaring it makes the best brew in London. Take the risk out of your ristretto and head straight to these tried-and-approved caffeine-loving cafés.
THE WATCH HOUSE
Built in the early 1800s as a guardhouse for the nearby St Mary Magdalene churchyard (quite what it was guarding, or from whom, is unclear), The Watch House is now a small but perfectly-formed café that’s emblematic of the artisanal renaissance Bermondsey has experienced in the last few years. The coffee is justifiably lauded as the best in the postcode; the lattes are spot-on, and there’s a bottomless single-origin fresh brew that’s perfect for the wifi hoggers who set up camp here in the daytime. Sandwiches, baguettes and salads are amply proportioned and all made onsite with fresh, organic and locally sourced ingredients. Best of all is the décor: distressed brickwork, exposed beams and a recessed bench area for conspiratorial chinwags.
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193 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UW.
No phone.
Borough or Bermondsey tube.
HEJ
Aside from the name, which is Swedish for ‘hello’, Hej is Scandi without hitting you over the head with it – the décor is understated, the space light and airy, thanks to beautiful big windows. You’ll want to linger over delicious cinnamon buns and cheekily titled ‘Viking Balls’, or muffins, brownies, salmon bagels and cheddar scones. The coffee (made with beans from Swedish coffee company Löfbergs) is strong with no hint of bitterness. And there’s plenty of room to be leisurely about the whole thing, though the seats in the window are often taken by freelancers and students on laptops. The only thing that may threaten to cut your stay short is the lack of a toilet.
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1 Bermondsey Square, SE1 3UN.
No phone.
London Bridge or Borough tube.
CLIMPSON & SONS
Broadway Market stretches in a graceful arc from London Fields to Regent’s Canal, and is a mecca for artisan food lovers lured by its many speciality stallholders every Saturday. As you might expect, there’s no shortage of places to grab a fancy cup of coffee, but Climpson & Sons is unequivocally the best. It was founded by Ian Burgess, an industrious chap so impressed by the coffee he sampled travelling in Australia that he set up his own London stall in the early noughties. By the end of the decade Climpson & Sons had grown into a coffee roaster and bona fide bricks-and-mortar East End institution. A nice illustration of its famous attention to detail: if you take sugar, baristas will add it at the espresso stage, so as not to ruin the silky foam finish. A class act.
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67 Broadway Market, E8 4PH.
020 7812 9829
London Fields Overground.
BULLDOG EDITION AT ACE HOTEL
For as pure and perfect a hipster experience as you could wish for, stop by this barista paradise in the lobby of the Ace Hotel on Shoreditch High Street. The staff go to an awful lot of trouble over the coffee. Beans hail from Square Mile Coffee Roasters, with World Tasters Champion Anette Moldvaer setting the brewing standard, while the milk comes from the happy grazers of Northiam Dairy on the Kent/Sussex border. This might seem a faff over nothing, but the proof is in the tasting: a nuttier, sweeter latte, and a foam as sleek and tantalising as the models sipping on their green tea. There’s also excellent filter coffees, beautiful pastries and soup and sandwiches for lunch – you might have to grab-and-go though, as there’s limited window-side seating.
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100 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JQ.
020 7613 9800
Shoreditch High Street Overground.
ALCHEMY
If there’s anyone in London who needs caffeine, it’s City workers, and this trendy set-up in the heart of the Square Mile delivers a top-quality hit. Alchemy’s café is kitted out with wooden counters, filament bulbs and white walls adorned with only a blackboard menu – it may sound awfully familiar, but it’s a breath of fresh air among the City’s soulless chains. With real heart, the owners trade directly with plantation owners in Central and South America, bringing the beans to their south London roastery. The list of traditional espresso-based coffees is backed up by more modish offerings such as cold brews and excellent filter coffees (there’s loads of brewing equipment available to buy too). Snacks range from cakes including raspberry and nectarine friands to more ample lunch options – but nothing that will detract from the star of the show. In a word: magic.
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8 Ludgate Broadway, EC4V 6DU.
020 7329 9904
Blackfriars tube or City Thameslink rail.
THE FIELDS BENEATH
Nestled in the base of an old Victorian viaduct (right next to Kentish Town West Overground), this intimate coffee bar and snackery is small in size but giant in reputation. Named after local antiquarian Gillian Tindall’s landmark 1977 study of Kentish Town’s history, it’s become a neighbourhood institution in a postcode which prides itself on togetherness. Queuing up for one of its magnificent coffees (for ages the café operated a rotating supplier policy, but have lately settled on a fruitful collaboration with Coffee by Tate, which roasts its wares in a WWII Nissen hut in the grounds of Tate Britain), you’ll tune in to all manner of juicy local gossip. By the time you’ve polished off your toastie, croissant or cheeringly gigantic cookie and slurped the last of your macchiato, you’ll wish you lived nearby yourself.
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52a Prince of Wales Road, NW5 3LN.
020 7424 8838
No website.
Kentish Town West Overground.
PRUFROCK
You might expect this spacious, well-situated establishment to be a bit full of itself, given that its name is a reference to a TS Eliot poem, the director is a former World Barista Champion, and that it currently teaches internationally-accredited courses in the fine art of coffee. Not a bit of it. The staff are as lively, likeable and lovely as the coffee they serve. The weekday denizens are mostly local creatives and tech entrepreneurs, many of whom tend to appreciate the finer things, so not only is the espresso without comparison, the food is far, far more ambitious than your usual coffee shop fare. Try a pork belly, chorizo and bean stew, or a stellar haddock kedgeree.
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23-25 Leather Lane, EC1N 7TE.
020 7242 0467
Farringdon or Chancery Lane tube.
MONMOUTH
The folks at Monmouth started their obsession with sourcing and roasting high-quality, sustainable coffee beans back in 1978, decades before most Londoners could even pronounce ‘espresso’ correctly. The capital’s caffeine scene has come a long way since then, but Monmouth still leads the way. Its regularly changing selection of fairly traded, single-origin beans are roasted at the company’s Bermondsey headquarters and served as filter coffee. Go for the tart, chocolatey Guatemalan Finca la Pila, or the sweet, fruity Ethiopian Deri Kojao. If you don’t spot the queue snaking from this prime corner site, you’ll smell the beans – staff spend all day shovelling them whole into bags or grinding them for customers to buy, or to enjoy in the farmhouse-style café area as they soak up Borough Market’s atmosphere.
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2 Park Street, SE1 9AB.
020 7232 3010
London Bridge tube.
BRANCHES: Covent Garden WC2H 9EU; Bermondsey SE16 4EJ.
TIMBERYARD
This café is an unofficial office for the laptop-toting twentysomethings who take up residence on its comfortable sofas to tap away as they get their caffeine and sugar fixes. The former comes courtesy of Has Bean roastery – try a toasty, aromatic latte or, if time allows, the superior buzz of a drip-fed, slow-brewed ‘Chemex for two’. Timberyard’s sweet treats don’t pull their punches, either: gargantuan slices of peanut butter loaf cake, glossy wedges of raspberry and almond tart, and salted-caramel brownies are all must-trys. The savoury selection is no less mouthwatering, with deep-filled quiches and wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches, toasted to order. Timberyard’s secret weapon, however, is its staff, whose friendly, feel-good approach takes the sting out of the inevitable queues and hustle for a seat.
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7 Upper St Martin’s Lane, WC2H 9DL.
No phone.
Leicester Square tube.
BRANCHES: Old Street EC1V 9HW.
SHOREDITCH GRIND
The suave brick cylinder on the rim of the recently rebranded ‘Silicon Roundabout’ (Old Street roundabout, to you and me) was the first in the chain of ‘Grinds’, with outlets now in Soho, Holborn and London Bridge. The key to its success is more than a great coffee – notably a legendary flat white, alongside shorter offerings such as a piccolo and macchiato. It also has tasty bites (the moist, moreish rosemary focaccia bookends some lovely sandwiches), cocktails in the evenings, and an insistent, pumping soundtrack. The music is entirely central to the operation: co-founder Kaz was one half of Bodyrockers (‘I like the way you move’) and their upstairs recording suite has committed to tape the dulcet tones of the likes of Sam Smith, Pixie Lott and Tinie Tempah.
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213 Old Street, EC1V 9NR.
020 7490 7490
Old Street tube.
BRANCHES: Soho W1F 9RP; Holborn WC1V 7BD; London Bridge SE1 9RA.
BAR TERMINI
Bar Termini conjures up the ideal Italian station café (the one you’d describe to your friends ad nauseum when you got home) so convincingly that it would feel like a theme café if it wasn’t so classy. Established by Tony Conigliaro, the Midas of London’s cocktail-bar scene, it’s a bijou space with pale green leather banquettes, shiny walnut tables, storage racks on bare-brick walls, and a marble-topped bar where coffees and cocktails are dispensed with equal care and attention. The latte is a triple measure of the peerlessly smooth house coffee, expressed as a double ristretto and served in a Continental-style bowl with a jug of foamy milk (a blend of two milks). Snacks include Italian-style croissants, bite-sized filled rolls and charcuterie. It’s a perfect fit for villagey Soho.
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7 Old Compton Street, W1D 5JE.
07860 945 018
Leicester Square tube.
WORKSHOP
This cool customer has steadily made a name for itself since opening in 2011 – the term ‘coffee shop’ just doesn’t do it justice. Sure, it takes coffee seriously: the on-site roastery filled with bags of painstakingly sourced beans, the house-roasted coffee on sale at the cake-laden counter, and the monogrammed, expertly manned La Marzocco coffee machine all attest to that (as do Workshop’s smooth and savoury brews). But coffee is just one of the reasons why Clerkenwell’s residents and workers regularly fill the tables in the stylish, low-lit, dining room. Workshop also offers stonking breakfasts and brunches (try the house take on huevos rancheros, topped with braised beans, jerk sauce and jalapeños), elegant lunch and dinner menus, and even cocktails. Cheery table service is another plus – if you can get a table, that is.
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27 Clerkenwell Road, EC1M 5RN.
020 7253 5754
Farringdon tube.
BRANCHES: Fitzrovia W1W 7FE; Holborn EC1A 2FD; Marylebone W1U 1AX.
