facttime

I was quick off the mark with my first London coffee shop visit of the year, on 2 January, although as Formative Coffee  first opened its doors in Victoria almost a year ago, I wasn't as prompt as I would have liked. The small shop is a short walk from St James's Park Tube station (and St James's Park itself, for that matter), and is only open on weekdays and only until 5 pm, which is why I'd struggled to visit previously. On the first working day of the year, I found Formative fairly quiet, although there were also bursts of customers seeking coffee to take away. From the outside, Formative is very sleek, located in a pleasingly curved flatiron-shaped building on the corner of the pedestrianised Butler Place. The curvature is echoed inside, with a large black coffee bar that occupies most of one wall. White tiling, black tables and olive green chairs complete the look. The coffee menu is simple, offering just espresso, filter coffee, flat whites and lattes. And the cof...

I've been writing about coffee since I started this blog in 2007, but it wasn't until the start of the last decade when speciality coffee shop reviews took on a more central role among my posts. In January 2010, I was living in Marylebone and had just taken a new job in King's Cross, which brought my commuting back to Cambridge to an end. As I've discussed before , back then I had to walk 20 minutes on my lunch breaks to get to the nearest speciality coffee shop, the original Espresso Room on Great Ormond Street. And now...well, the speciality coffee scene in King's Cross, London and many other cities throughout the world has changed dramatically. My tastes have changed too: I used to drink macchiatos almost exclusively (hence the name of this blog), and I still enjoy them (and their slightly larger siblings, the piccolo and the cortado), but these days, I drink a lot more hand-brewed filter coffee, usually light roasts from single origins. I've taken the occas...