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In this, the first and most delicious of my ninth  annual end-of-year round-up posts, I highlight some of my favourite coffee shops, restaurants and dishes of the year, both in London and on my travels. This year, I visited nine countries (Estonia, the US, Germany, Switzerland, Estonia, Malaysia, Singapore, Spain and France). From £4 chicken rice in Singapore to tempting tasting menus in Tallinn, as well as sublime speciality coffee, it's been quite a year. As usual, I've only included places I visited for the first time in 2019. 1. Best coffee shop London Le Café Alain Ducasse I've worked in King's Cross for almost a decade, and it's been fascinating to watch the neighbourhood change. Where I used to have to walk at least 20 minutes on my lunch break to find good coffee, my most recent King's Cross speciality coffee guide  demonstrates that the area is now a hub for craft coffee. The much-lauded opening of Alain Ducasse's Le Café in the sleek Coal Drops Ya...

For the past two years, my mum and I have taken a short European city break together — Budapest  last year and Prague  the year before. This year, we flew south instead of east to Seville, Spain's fourth-largest city and the capital of Andalucía. Although I've been to Spain a number of times, my visits to date have been centred around Barcelona and Bilbao, so it was great to finally go to the south of the country. We spent three full days in Seville, arriving on Friday evening and flying home late on Monday night. Although we were there in late November, the weather was very nice too: it was around 15 degrees and sunny for most of our trip, even if the drizzle did emerge on our last day. THINGS TO DO Plaza de España. As we were blessed with glorious sunshine on our first morning in Seville, we decided to go to the Plaza de España, a stunning plaza built for the Ibero-American exposition of 1929, first thing. The colourful mix of architectural styles looked particularly lovely ...

At the end of November, I spent a long weekend in sunny Seville with my mum, my first time in the capital of Andalucía. We had three full days in the city, which gave me enough time to visit a few of the speciality coffee shops on my list — without inflicting too much coffee on my mum, who doesn't like coffee (or even the smell of it). I will be blogging separately about all of the other things we got up to during our visit; stay tuned! Parcería Café After two days of glorious sunshine, the drizzle set in on our final day in the city, which meant it was a good day for popping in and out of coffee shops, as well as churches and other historic buildings on our self-guided walking tour of the Macarena district in the north of the city centre. Located opposite the Mercado de Feria, a bustling indoor food market, Parcería made a great stop between visits to the market and to Palacio Marqueses de la Algaba, just around the corner. They serve locally roasted coffee from Alquimis...