One shortcut to following the global coffee scene is to track the movements of Tim Styles, such is the Australian barista’s knack for turning up at seminal shops at the right time. He’s worked stints at Ray Cafe in Melbourne, Joe the Art of Coffee in New York, Flat White in London, Intelligentsia in Venice (California) and Penny University, the pop-up brew bar in London’s Shoreditch which pops down today. >>Continue reading

My interest in The Ivy had nothing to do with stargazing at that famous celebrity haunt in London’s West End. I had asked Dino Joannides, whose passion is gastronomy and not astronomy, to meet me there for lunch to help answer a single question:

Was The Ivy burger good enough to justify its £13.75 (about $21) price? >>Continue reading

Invited by MasterChef‘s John Torode to try the house burger at his new bar and grill on behalf of burgermonday I sunk into this two-hander with hope and hunger. The LUXE burger proved to be an irresistible hunk oozing beefy, cheesy, yolky juices with every bite. Lucious and lushish!

The only bummer was the bun. >>Continue reading

The London cafenatic’s Tour de France is a kilometre long, with no hills or turns from start to finish. It departs from look mum no hands, a garagehouse coffee shop at 49 Old St, and arrives at Rapha Cycle Club, a pop-up gallery, boutique and coffee bar at 146-148 Clerkenwell Rd. >>Continue reading

When Jay Rayner arrived for lunch at Obsidian on a damp Manchester Monday he found a restaurant unprepared to serve any punter, much less the restaurant critic of The Observer.

“A restaurant trading outside of its most appropriate hours”, mused Rayner in his 4th of July review, “is like a transvestite who hasn’t shaved”.   >>Continue reading

The food pages are rife with promises of perfection. The guardian.co.uk tells us how to make the perfect pâté and the perfect mayonnaise while posting the perfect hummus debate. The telegraph.co.uk headlines recipes for the perfect sponge and the perfect roast lamb cake. And just today, latimes.com revealed how to grill the perfect steak.  >>Continue reading

Behind the top-scoring performance of Michael Phillips in finals of the 2010 World Barista Championship, held on the 25th of June at London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre, was a single idea: how can the processing of coffee beans influence a barista’s calibrations?

That may at first seem a snore of a technical question unlikely to electrify the spectator stands. Indeed it was the efficiency and flair of this fluid barista from Intelligentsia Coffee in Chicago – and possibly also his white suspenders – that rocked the Olympia’s great steel and glass ceiling, not dry tales of wet processing. But with his bean-splitting challenge, Phillips was taking the most fundamental responsibility of a barista – brewing and serving a coffee to its best advantage – to a new level. And the judges, sadly the only ones in the arena who got to sample the espressos, cappuccinos and signature espresso drinks prepared in competition, were sufficiently impressed to award the USA its first World Barista Champion. >>Continue reading

We’re always keen to know where chefs choose to dine, ostensibly because they know more about food and what goes on in restaurants than we do. But isn’t it the chefs’ inexperience, as much as their expertise, that makes their dining eatineraries so compelling? With the exception of globetrotting figureheads they generally work mealtime hours. Starved for dining-out opportunities they are desperate to make the most of each one, unlike jaded food critics who can seem equally determined to make the worst of each meal out. >>Continue reading