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Earlier this month, I was back in New York for eight days. I was working and staying in the Financial District for most of the trip, and to the best of my knowledge, I've already explored most of the best speciality coffee options in the neighbourhood ( my guide is here ). This, combined with what seemed to be a relatively small number of new openings of independent speciality coffee shops since my last visit one year ago, meant I didn't get to visit as many new-to-me coffee shops as I had hoped. There were four or five on my list that I couldn't quite squeeze in this trip, and two more in the East Village (Frisson Espresso and Southern Cross) that have recently closed — alas, Google Maps hadn't yet got the memo! These are the new-to-me places I did visit (all of which have also been added to my New York speciality coffee guide and map ): Baodega (Flatiron) After  two weeks in Malaysia , where I consumed more than my fair share of dumplings, I couldn't resist visit...

When Curators Coffee Gallery closed earlier this year, I was sad to have lost one of my favourite central London speciality coffee shops. Both its Margaret Street location, just a couple of blocks north of Oxford Circus, and its high-quality, multi-roaster coffee offering kept me coming back time after time. As such, I was excited to spot the distinctive, red  Kiss the Hippo  branding when I was passing the site one afternoon in June. Speciality coffee roaster Kiss the Hippo's first cafe is in Richmond and despite the plaudits it has received, I rarely journey that far west in London and hadn't managed to visit. To make amends for this oversight, I've now visited the new Fitzrovia location twice, once on a busy Saturday afternoon and again the following week before an early meeting on Portland Place. Unsurprisingly, I'm very much enamoured with Margaret Street's newest speciality coffee occupants, and it's set to become my go-to 'I'm on Oxford Street...g...

I've already blogged about my time in  Malaysia  and  Singapore , and posted many more photos on  Flickr , but this is a more detailed post about my overall experience: how my itinerary worked, where I stayed, what I did, and how I travelled around. As is usually the case when I’m researching my main annual holiday, it wasn't possible to squeeze all of the places I wanted to visit in Malaysia and Singapore into a two-week itinerary. In particular, fitting in Borneo and Singapore in addition to Peninsular Malaysia was quite challenging. But my final itinerary had a good mix of cities and culture, wildlife and beach time. I took several internal flights and I didn’t have a lot of down time, but everything worked well, and with hindsight, I would not have wanted to sacrifice any of the destinations I visited. Skip to: KL | Perhentian Islands | Penang | Borneo | Singapore | Practicalities Days 1–3: Kuala Lumpur After leaving London around 9 pm on Friday night, ...

When I thought I would have an eight-hour layover in Singapore on my way to Australia a couple of years ago, I immediately started researching the speciality coffee shops that I might visit. Sadly, the layover didn't work out, but my research didn't go to waste as I spent just over two days in Singapore at the end of my recent trip to Malaysia . I visited eight coffee shops and roasters during my stay — Saturday was a particularly caffeinated day, as I sought to stay awake for my very late flight back to London. Not by coincidence, my hotel was also located in easy reach of many of the coffee shops on my list. The quality of the coffee was consistently very high, but my very favourites are marked in purple in my Google Map. *  Apartment Coffee I visited this small, minimalist coffee shop on the recommendation of the barista I met at Strangers' Union (see below), and was really impressed with both the coffee and the experience. Almost all of the seating in the narrow cafe i...