facttime

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...

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...

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...