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If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I've visited a fair few speciality coffee shops over the past 16 years. Many of these cafes have been beautifully and thoughtfully designed. But the new branch of  % Arabica  in Spitalfields really takes the cake (canelé, perhaps) with its stunning coffee bar. If you enjoy the works of Yayoi Kusama , you'll probably feel at home here. % Arabica is a Japanese speciality coffee company founded by Kenneth Shoji to celebrate his twin passions of coffee and design. He opened the % Arabica flagship cafe in Kyoto in September 2014 — four months too late for my trip to Japan , unfortunately. I've been to one of the London branches, in Covent Garden, a few times, but I hadn't realised how much the company had expanded: they currently have 150 cafes in 20 countries. I had seen a couple of pictures of the company's newest coffee shop, inside Spitalfields Market , and took advantage of a bank holiday Friday to ch...

Perch Bakery  is a beautiful new cafe in Birmingham that serves speciality coffee, creative brunch dishes and exquisite pastries. I indulged in all three of these when I paid a visit to Perch en route to Wolverhampton on Saturday and I was very impressed. I heard about Perch from Eleanor at  Saint Nine , who is always a great source of Brum tips. The bakery is the second location from the team behind the acclaimed  Early Bird Bakery  in Kings Heath, which I haven't yet managed to visit. Perch is located on the ground floor of Citadel, a grand Victorian building on Corporation Street, which is now home to various office and retail spaces. It was a sunny day and when I arrived, just before noon, the tall windows of the shopfront were reflecting the historic, redbrick buildings opposite. Inside, it's a rather more modern affair. The large, L-shaped marble counter occupies much of the space, with the display of pastries (more about those later) at one end,...

DI Niamh Khalid, the protagonist at the heart of Anne Mattias's debut novel, Kingsrise , has had better Halloween nights: first, her beloved teenage brother Lance and his friends find themselves in trouble with the law and then a body shows up on the beach. It turns out that the man is critically wounded, not dead, but working out who he is and where (or when) he has come from proves challenging for Niamh and her team. And then a dead man dressed as a knight is found near The Gate, the stone arch on the outskirts of Niamh's sleepy town, and things become even stranger — and more troubling. The first chapter sets up the story perfectly, introducing Niamh and establishing her complex relationship with Lance — a wonderful characterisation of the often neglected brother–sister relationship — before ending with a twist. From then on, I was gripped by the story and ended up staying up way too late to find out what happened. I don't read much in the fantasy genre but I am a big fa...