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.

“The British capital won’t be a coffee capital,” I wrote in April 2009, “until the taste for excessively milky coffees recedes and the best coffee shops look beyond espresso to filter- and siphon-brewed coffees. I’d also like to see more coffee shops sourcing and roasting their own beans.” One year on, those conditions have been [...]

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 four World Barista Champions [...]

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 confections served in a short-stemmed, ring-handled glass. I recognize that glass as a mazagran, which, like the [...]