Antipodean know-how and joviality continue to invigorate London’s coffee landscape. 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.

Yet it’s home-grown talent that represents the cream of the crema: Two of the last three World Barista Champions are British and work in London: 2007 winner James Hoffmann is co-owner of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, an artisan roaster supplying beans to half of the top 10 London coffee shops as well as great cafés like the Farm Collective, Tina we salute you, Ginger & White and the patisserie/tea room Bea’s of Bloomsbury. Reigning champion Gwilym Davies operates a coffee cart parked at Whitecross Market – “Pitch 42″ – on weekday mornings and at Columbia Rd Flower Market on Sunday mornings as well as the “Prufrock” coffee trolley he’s rolled into the menswear shop Present. Monmouth Coffee Company maintains a global influence, setting standards for sourcing, roasting and brewing beans. In addition to its namesake coffee shops it supplies 2 superb locales for coffee + eats, Scandinavian Kitchen and Lantana Cafe.

When this list was first posted in April 2009 I cautioned that the British capital wouldn’t be a coffee capital until the taste for excessively milky coffees receded and the best coffee shops looked beyond espresso to filter coffees. Those conditions have been met and the wishes of the growing legion of local cafenatics have been granted: London’s great coffee moment has come.

London’s top 10 coffee shops nurture a close-knit community of cafenatics who circulate around East London and the West End. That fluidity can extend to the baristas. Their restlessness speeds staff turnover, making it problematic to position any one coffee shop atop another on this top 10 list. Barista flair is a main consideration in choosing the top 10, ahead of shop atmosphere and behind only coffee quality and consistency.

Click here for map of Top 10 Coffee Shops in London

1. Monmouth Coffee, the great pioneer of pour-over filter coffee, is strategically situated between Covent Garden, Bloomsbury and Soho on the street that lent it its name. It may not be a very daring or trendy pick as London’s best coffee shop but it’s difficult to do otherwise, given its world-class roasting program and its attention to both espresso-based drinks and filter coffees. Snug tables hidden in the rear must often be shared, when two knees can already seem two too many. The larger Monmouth outside Borough Market, with its pour-through cone filter bar, communal table and improvisational street theatre (otherwise known as a queue) is a must stop before, after and midway through visits to the wondrous food market. A separate Monmouth stall inside the market’s old hall has closed.

Monmouth Covent Garden – 26 Monmouth Street, WC2
Monmouth Borough Market – 2 Park Street, SE1

2. Flat White, a place both of employment and leisure for expats from New Zealand, has emerged as the restorative stopover of choice for flat-out Soho. Milk Bar shares everything with Flat White but its name and Soho address. The macchiato is made from the same custom espresso blend by roaster Square Mile, marked with the same three-swirl signature and delivered with the same Antipodean good cheer. The wall art changes frequently, which is often – but not always – fortunate.

Flat White – 17 Berwick Street, W1

Milk Bar – 3 Bateman Street, W1

3. Dose Espresso owner/barista James Phillips would probably take his red, curvy, Florentine La Marzocco FB-80 espresso machine home with him at night if it wasn’t so heavy. The meticulous New Zealander puts it to good use, sourcing his blend from Square Mile and his guest coffees from UK roasters like Climpson & Sons, HasBean and Union. The downsized dimensions of the Gibraltar, a mini-latte-in-a-glass, suit this tiny shop east of Smithfield Market.

69 Long Lane, EC1

4. Nude Espresso does not feature topless baristas or the like. Nude is instead a calming retreat from the outrageousness – and outrageously bad coffee – of the area around Brick Lane. The beans are roasted in-house, while the warm hospitality and milk-texturing techniques are exported from New Zealand and Australia. If you want the naked truth, Nude’s standing offer of a complimentary coffee with every 250-gram bag of coffee beans purchased is a no-brainer from both directions: If you’re buying beans you might as well have a coffee. If you’re having a coffee you might as well buy some beans.

26 Hanbury Street, E1

5. The Espresso Room offers proof you don’t need to have Antipodean ancestry to be an unflappably affable London barista. We’ll ignore the fact that British owner/operator Ben Townsend spent 8 years in Melbourne, acquiring Australian citizenship along the way. In his narrow shop, Ben fastidiously pulls every shot of Square Mile espresso as if it were lifesaving: Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital would be wise to prescribe 3 per day to their patients.

31-35 Great Ormond Street, WC1

6. Climpson & Sons borrows its name and antique signage from an old butcher shop, rather than Burgil Coffee, the roaster that opened it. The confusion ended when Burgil adopted the C&S name, too. This relaxed haunt is one of the few London coffee shops to roast its own beans for its espresso blend. The very best (or, given the queues, the very worst) time to visit is late Saturday mornings, when Broadway Market is buzzing.

10 Broadway Market, E8

7. Kaffeine charges £2.30 for a latte, which, given the high rents for office space in Fitzrovia, has to be regarded as one of the great values in London. It’s a great spot to take a kaffeinated meeting or respite, with Square Mile beans extracted from Synesso Cyncra espresso machine. No, caffeine is not spelled with a K in Australia and New Zealand, from whence the owners and baristas came.

66 Great Titchfield Street, W1

8. Taylor st baristas derived a poetic beauty from its location on a pedestrian road directly opposite a Starbucks. With all seats inside this narrow coffee shop facing out the window towards SBs, those enjoying the chocolatey aromatic notes of their coffee (from Union’s Revelation blend) were thinking the same thing: There but for the grace of God, go I. The recent closing of that Starbucks marked a victory of sorts for this indie coffee shop and its discerning devotees. And now that victorious David has opened a handsome Goliath of a coffee shop in Bank with a wide variety of brew options and coffees from Union and Square Mile.

1A New Street, EC2

125 Old Broad Street, EC2

9. Taste of Bitter Love defied logic and perhaps also good sense when it introduced al fresco cappuccinos to a charmless stretch of Hackney Road. You might put it down to the mindless Australian optimism of Bill, the co-owner, until you’ve sampled the coffee (from Square Mile) and homemade cakes. Then you won’t want to give up your pavement perch. The small interior boasts funky-groovy fixtures befitting a café named after a Gladys Knight & the Pips song.

276 Hackney Road, E2

10.Scooterworks grew out of a Vespa garage in the shadow of Waterloo station, its caffeine revving the engines of London Italophiles awaiting service. Scooterworks is covered with Italian flea-market finds, most notably a working 1950s Faema lever espresso machine. The coffee used to be pulled with classic Italian blend with enough caffeine-rich robusta to pry open the tired eyes of road-weary travellers. Now they use a medium-roast blend of arabicas London’s Union.

132 Lower Marsh, SE1

276 Hackney Road, E2