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By all accounts, 2020 has been a terrible year, but one upshot was that I finally got a bike and started cycling around London while the locked-down streets were much quieter than usual. Another positive was that without having to rely on convoluted public transport routes, I was finally able to visit Amoret Coffee 's Notting Hill roastery cafe, which had been on my to-visit list for an embarrassingly long time. Owner Sadiq opened the first Amoret Coffee in Hammersmith in 2016, and soon acquired a reputation as one of the best speciality coffee shops in London. My coffee blogger friends at Bean There at  and Bean Thinking are among those who have regularly sung Amoret's praises. But even in a pre-COVID-19 world, Hammersmith was a rather circuitous journey from Bermondsey and I never managed to visit. Happily, the Notting Hill cafe, which opened two years ago and brought roasting in house, is only a 40-minute cycle ride for me, through the Royal Parks, and I've now been twi...

Shad Thames, a historic Bermondsey street one block from the Thames and just east of Tower Bridge, is on my regular running route and I often walk through on my way to or from the river. Earlier this year, I'd spotted a new Italian restaurant in the Cardamom Building — which used to house a branch of Watch House  until it moved a few doors down — but kept forgetting to look it up when I got home. By the time I found Legare  online, London had gone into lockdown. Flash forward a few months and I noticed that Legare had reopened for dine-in customers, and although all the Eat Out To Help Out  slots were fully booked, I reserved a table for an early post-work supper on Thursday last week. Legare is the Italian for 'to connect' or 'to bind' — including in the sense of binding together ingredients in cooking. And among the customers of the fully booked restaurant, there were a few loyal regulars who'd clearly felt a connection with Legare. There are a couple of dozen...

There's something about a multi-course brunch that I reminds me of some of the extended, high-end brunches I've enjoyed in Paris. In London, it's often a more casual affair, but in these COVID-19 times, why wouldn't I want to linger over two brunch courses plus speciality coffee from Difference Coffee ? And brand-new cafe–bar Queens of Mayfair  is a beautiful setting to do just that. I've been eagerly awaiting the opening of Queens of Mayfair, the brainchild of sisters Victoria and Grace Sheppard, for several months and it opened its Queen Street doors last week. It's a real all-day venue, with breakfast and lunch dishes and cocktails, as well as coffee, cakes and pastries for in-between times. Among the sweet treat selection are the  doughnuts-in-eclair's-clothing from Longboys , which  I tried recently in King's Cross . On Saturdays, they do a set two-course brunch with juice and a hot drink for £25 — if you're feeling especially fancy, you can add...

One of my favourite things to do — on my travels and at home in London — is to eat out at different restaurants, new-to-me or old familiars. What with one thing and another, this has been from difficult to impossible over the past six months, but as London eateries begin to take those first steps towards that elusive 'new normal', I too have now dined out a few times. But none of these 'first meals back' came with as much anticipation as Friday night's supper at Brat 's al fresco summer pop-up at Climpson's Arch in Hackney . I'd never been to the much-acclaimed Shoreditch original, and the pop-up seemed like an ideal venue for my bro's belated birthday treat. The tables are set up, with appropriate distancing, underneath a perspex canopy, prettied up with fairy lights. Our table was right next to the kitchen, which was great for watching the chefs at work. Of course, when we booked a table — weeks ago — at a restaurant known for its Basque-inspired o...

I've long been a regular at the WatchHouse coffee shops , the first two of which opened in my neighbourhood on Bermondsey Street and Shad Thames . And what with one thing and another , I've been spending even more time than usual in Bermondsey over the past few months. While the Bermondsey Street WatchHouse — based in the former watch house of St Mary Magdalen churchyard — has been closed for a refurb, I spied a new member of the family in the works, located at the top of Maltby Street, near the titular market . It turns out that the new WatchHouse is a roastery as well as a very sleek coffee bar. WatchHouse previously used Ozone coffee in their shops but have now taken their roasting in house. I visited on Sunday morning while doing some errands, before Maltby Street Market was in full swing. There was a short queue outside the WatchHouse, however, as staff had implemented physical distancing practices, which limited the number of customers inside. Hand-washing and mask-weari...