The Caffeine Chronicles: Wood St Coffee

My visit to Walthamstow last weekend wouldn't have been complete without a visit to Wood St Coffee, a coffee roastery and café at Blackhorse Workshop, a short walk north of Blackhorse Road Tube.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Bühler and Co

If you look at my map of London specialty coffee shops, you'll notice that there's a bias towards central and south-east London. But I've been trying to expand my horizons and hop on the Tube to visit more coffee spots further north and west of my Bermondsey home. One such outing was to Bühler and Co in Walthamstow last weekend, where I was able to sample both the coffee and the brunch.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Hagen, Mayfair

On Swallow Street, just off Regent Street's curving tail is a Danish-influenced haven of specialty coffee, Hagen Espresso Bar. The name calls back to Copenhagen, where the concept was born; both have roots in the Old Norse word hǫfn, which, appropriately enough, means 'haven'.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Red Lion Coffee Co., The City

It's mean more than four years since I first visited Red Lion Coffee Co. in New Cross, and now Chris McKie and the team have opened a second coffee shop at the base of The Scalpel in the heart of the City of London. It's been open a little while and although it's a fairly recent discovery for me, I've already visited a couple of times.

At Pedler Good Fortune, a Feast from the East (CLOSED)

Sadly, Pedler Good Fortune is permanently closed.

One of my all-time favourite meals in London was the first time my friends and I visited the original Pedler on Peckham Rye. We were there for the neighbourhood eatery's soft launch in 2014, and with 50% off food and five of us present, we got to make that wonderful order: "We'll take one of everything." As predicted, we all returned regularly, celebrating birthdays, babies and boozy brunches, usually featuring a Little Bird gin cocktail (they're owned by the same people). But although the restaurant was beautifully designed, it could feel crowded even in the beforetimes, and unfortunately, after one lockdown too many, Pedler closed its doors for good. 

Luckily, however, it has now reopened as Pedler Good Fortune (CLOSED) in a new location on Queens Road, still in Peckham but a mile northeast. The delicious food, great décor and excellent service remain the same, but when I visited one evening last week, there were some exciting changes too.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Missing Bean, Abingdon

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. 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 visiting my parents at the weekend, I stopped by the Abingdon coffee shop, which opened in late May.

The Caffeine Chronicles: Carbon Kopi

Midway through a long bike ride around west London, I found myself not in a dark forest, but in Hammersmith, 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 don't return often enough. Owning a bike makes the journey from Bermondsey easier, though, and knowing 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.