facttime

I never could get the hang of Wandsworth. Like Southwark, it's a London borough and a district, which confused me. And in any case, that part of south-west London is poorly connected to my part of south-east London. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that it's taken me much longer than it should have to visit Story Coffee 's Wandsworth location. But I'm very glad I did! It helped that I was meeting a friend better trained on the District Line than me. Besides, the sun was out and a lazy, alfresco brunch-time catch-up was just what the doctor ordered. I caught the train to Wandsworth Town, and made the short walk past all the eateries on Old York Road to the Ram Quarter, a newish development that combines some of the period features of the old site with some shinier glass buildings. There are a few places to eat, with a new branch of Friends of Ours  coming soon. Story Coffee is closer to the Wandsworth High Street side of the Ram Quarter. It has a large outdoor ...

2021 was the year when I finally made it to one of the two speciality-coffee-and-pinball bars on my to-visit list: Tilt , in Birmingham, which I've since been to several more times, usually on my way to Wolves matches. But it has taken another year for me to get to the other one, Chief Coffee , even though its Chiswick location is a little closer to home. As usual, I blame the delay on the lack of convenient transport routes from my area of south-east London to much of west London and my District Line anxiety (am I on the right branch? Is the train actually going to stop at Turnham Green?). It was on another recent District Line journey (this one enforced by a broken Bakerloo Line) that I spotted an advert for a revival of Closer at the Lyric Hammersmith to mark the 25th anniversary of the excellent Patrick Marber play. I immediately booked tickets for a matinee and decided to seek pre-theatre caffeination at Chief Coffee. To my relief, the Tube did indeed stop at Turnham Green an...

Since I got back from Uganda , work and life have both been keeping me busy, with few opportunities for coffee-shop-hopping. But on Sunday, with the sun shining, a brunch reservation on my phone and a spring in my step, I headed over to Notting Hill. I brunched at Sunday in Brooklyn — my first visit to the London outpost of the Brooklyn original, which I went to on my penultimate visit to New York . After a spot of hanami — the cherry blossoms were particularly lovely alongside the colourful houses of Notting Hill — it was coffee time. Luckily, I had just the coffee shop in mind, thanks to another great recommendation from Laith from  Saint Nine . And as it turned out,  LIFT , on Kensington Church Street, had another Brooklyn connection in store for me. LIFT opened in late 2019 — ah, the beforetimes! — and it was great to see such a constant stream of customers stopping by on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, passing by the A-board that declares that "coffee is a fruit." The brigh...

UPDATE (April 2022). Unfortunately, this location of Kapihan has now closed permanently. But they are planning to reopen soon in Vauxhall. Two of the recurring themes in my London coffee shop write-ups during this year-and-a-half of COVID have been: the power of coffee shops to connect people amid the loneliness of lockdown, and the ability of coffee shops to transport you and allow you to experience a taste of other places and cultures even when travelling is impossible or, at least, much harder than it once was. Both of these rang true at Kapihan , a Filipino coffee shop and bakery close to Battersea Park, which I visited again at the weekend. I say 'visited again' because it was the third time I've been: the first for a very quick espresso to go when I was running late for a meeting and the second when I forgot to check the bank holiday opening hours after a trip to Nostos  and found Kapihan closed. The third time was the charm on Sunday, even if the heavens opened just ...

The past two years have been among the most challenging for hospitality businesses, including speciality coffee shops, in London, and around the world. Keeping a speciality coffee shop in business in London is difficult even in normal times, let alone during a global pandemic, which has felt like a game of snakes and ladders with constant changes of rules, snap lockdowns and general uncertainty. Unfortunately, some coffee shops have had to close permanently (please come back, Black Swan Yard !), but it's been encouraging to see how many new — and often exciting — cafes have opened in London in the past couple of years.  I created an Instagram Guide highlighting some of my favourite 2020 and 2021 openings , but I wanted to collect them together on this blog too. Scroll on down if you're looking for new places to explore and support throughout the city. My usual caveat is that this isn't an exhaustive list, but I have visited most of these coffee shops more than once and enjo...