I've been visiting The Missing Bean in Oxford's Turl Street for over a decade and was delighted when they opened their own roastery in East Oxford a few years later. And now Missing Bean is expanding further, with two new cafés in Abingdon and Banbury, and another to come later in the summer at the West Way Square development in Botley. While I was visiting my parents at the weekend, I took the opportunity to visit the Abingdon coffee shop, which opened in late May.
Midway through a long bike ride around west London, I found myself not in a dark forest, but in Hammersmith, which is where I was born. You can't go home again, according to Thomas Wolfe's novel of the same name, but in my case, I just don't return often enough, even if owning a bike makes the journey from Bermondsey easier. And knowing that there was an excellent coffee stop, in the form of Carbon Kopi, helped me stay on track as I meandered along the Thames-side cycle route.
While cycling through Fulham recently, I overheard a woman describing a restaurant as "a combination of my two favourite cuisines, Italian and Japanese." I knew exactly where she was talking about because I was going to the same place, Angelina in Dalston, a few days later for a belated birthday dinner with my brother.
UPDATE: Lantern Coffee has now closed permanently.
While working from home during the past year and a bit, I have sought solace in my lunch-break strolls around Bermondsey and Borough, often stopping for food or coffee. Bermondsey has an abundance of specialty coffee shops (I have an updated neighbourhood guide in the works; there's always my south-east London guide in the meantime), and two roasters — Monmouth and Watch House — are based here (Pact too, although you can't normally visit). One of my regular lunchtime haunts was Black Swan Yard, but upsettingly, it was recently shut down by the landlord with almost no notice. I hope they'll be back but in the meantime, I found myself on Mill Street, down by the Thames, where I happened upon Lantern Coffee.
I was looking forward to reading Zakiya Dalila Harris's debut novel for many weeks, and I raced through it in a couple of evenings. In the novel, Nella is a 26-year-old editorial assistant working at a New York publishing house. She works hard, gets on well with her editor and hopes she is on track for a promotion in the not-too-distant future.
I wrote last week about my recent long weekend trip to Canterbury, with several side trips to the Kent coast. I brought my Aeropress with me, as I wasn't sure how much the bank holiday and COVID would combine to affect coffee shop opening hours, but I found several great coffee spots in Canterbury and Whitstable, all but one of which roast their own coffee. Read on to find out more and for a handy map.
CANTERBURY
Almost six months after my last mini-break, in Bath, I was craving R and R, and the call of the sea was particularly strong. This latter urge was not unique to me and a quick search for lodgings in a host of English seaside towns for the bank holiday weekend yielded very few options. But I was determined to get out of London for a few days, especially given the promising weather forecast, and I managed to book one of the last hotel rooms left in Canterbury, just seven miles from the Kent coast. With Canterbury as my base, I was able to explore the cathedral city and visit three seaside towns. Not bad going for a long weekend.
