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.

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 to Seville, Spain's fourth-largest city and the capital of Andalucía. Although I've been to Spain a number of times, my visits had centred around Barcelona and Bilbao, so it was great to finally go to the south of the country. 

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 specialty coffee shops on my list — without inflicting too much coffee on my mum, who doesn't like coffee (or even the smell of it).