If The Phoenician Scheme left you longing for more Wes Anderson, you might like to pay a visit to West London's Foreign Exchange News. The beautifully designed coffee shop would fit right in to Anderson's universe and — just as importantly — the coffee is great and there really is a working bureau de change inside!

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!

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.

The past two years have been among the most challenging for hospitality businesses, including specialty coffee shops, in London, and around the world. Keeping a specialty 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. 

With the glorious British summer in full force — oh, wait, that was two weeks ago — it was the perfect time for a staycation. I joined my parents in Pall Mall for a couple of nights last weekend, and although it wasn't as sunny as we had hoped, nor was it as rainy as forecast, and we made the best of it, dining at three different restaurants and spending a very enjoyable day exploring Notting Hill.

After visiting north-east London last week, this week's Caffeine Chronicles post is about a speciality coffee shop and roastery on the opposite side of London: Kiss the Hippo, in Richmond, to be more exact.

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.

Outside Over Under Coffee's Ladbroke Grove cafe, there's an A-board that reads 'best in the west'. Indeed, the Antipodean speciality coffee company has other locations in Earl's Court, West Brompton and Wandsworth, all a little far west for me even now I have two wheels at my disposal. And it was on two wheels that I made it to Ladbroke Grove on Sunday morning, despite the intermittently inclement weather.

By all accounts, 2020 has been a terrible year, but one upshot was that I finally got a bike and started cycling around London while the locked-down streets were much quieter than usual. Another positive was that without having to rely on convoluted public transport routes, I was finally able to visit Amoret Coffee's Notting Hill roastery cafe, which had been on my to-visit list for an embarrassingly long time.

Workshop Coffee — one of my all-time favourite London roasters — opened its latest coffee bar, to much acclaim, inside The Pilgrm Hotel in Paddington last summer. These days, however, I don't spend much time in that neighbourhood, so it isn't until I need to take a train from Paddington Station that an opportunity to visit presents itself.


Located on London Street, directly opposite Paddington Station, The Pilgrm Hotel might be missing an i but it certainly doesn't lack an eye for design, if its lobby is anything to go by. The mint green La Marzocco machine sits on the marble-meets-midcentury counter, while several low stools encircle the marble coffee tables by the windows that look out onto the street. On the other side of the grand, wooden staircase, smaller and squarer marble tables and stool seats are attached to the wall's wooden panels. There is some pleasing pendant lighting too.



Early on a wintry Saturday morning, there are only a few other customers. Although Workshop's hand-brewed filter coffee often impresses me, I don't have time to drink in and don't have a reusable cup with me. Instead, I order a piccolo, brewed with an Ethiopian Dimtu coffee. I'm not hungry yet but I also pick up an almond croissant for the train.



The piccolo is on the long side but smooth, sweet and well-balanced. I don't buy the beans, but if you do, Workshop often provides handy brew recipes for its espressos on its website. Several more customers come in while I am finishing my coffee, as the hotel guests — and Paddington more generally — begin to wake up.



And before long, it's time for me to slip out of these beautiful surroundings, past the vibrant blue tiling and back across Praed Street to the station. It seems as though I'm going to have to find more reasons to take a trip to Paddington Station.


Workshop Coffee at The Pilgrm. 25 London Street, London, W2 1HH (Tube: Paddington). Website. Twitter. Instagram.

For 100+ more of my favourite coffee shops in London, please check out my speciality coffee guide.

As regular readers know, I rarely visit West London these days, mainly because it isn't very convenient to get there from Bermondsey (I am spoiled living relatively centrally, which means I tend to walk or take a single bus almost everywhere). But when I lived in Marylebone, I used to enjoy strolling over to Westbourne Grove on a Sunday morning for brunch and a spot of shopping. Now, the opening of a new design-conscious speciality coffee shop, TAB x TAB, on Westbourne Grove has wooed me back.


TAB x TAB opened last month and I was intrigued to read about it in the press release I received while in Boston; since then, it's received rave reviews from some of my fellow London-based coffee writers. As I suspect it will be very busy this weekend while the Notting Hill Carnival is on and as I won't be in London for many more weekends until November, I figured that last weekend might be my last chance for some time and I hopped on a couple of buses over to verdant Westbourne Grove. The name, in case you were wondering (I was, but then to some, I am a Tab!), comes from the owners, Mathew and Charmaine Tabatabai. Mathew notes that TAB x TAB combines their passions of "quality coffee, delectable food and compelling conversation."



I arrived just after 10:00 am and all of the sun-drenched pavement tables were already taken, although there was still plenty of seating inside. I took a seat at one of the beautiful wooden stools perched in front of the window, which afford excellent people-watching. There are several other tables inside, both a larger, wooden communal table and smaller offerings. As will soon become a theme in this review, everything is thoughtfully designed and chic, but practical too.




The long, slate-grey coffee bar is home to a gorgeous MAVAM Undercounter espresso machine and there were two coffees available: the Brothers seasonal blend from Ozone and a Brazilian Fatima from Dutch roaster Bocca. There was a Bocca coffee available as a batch-brew filter too but I started with a piccolo with the Bocca espresso (£2.80). My food choice was easier, possibly because I didn't need to read beyond the second item on the all-day menu: avocado on toast with coriander, cashew and lime dressing (£7). Several other light meals and some gorgeous-looking pastries were also available.




I had already heard about the beautiful, hand-crafted ceramic cups, bowls and plates from London-based artist KANA — the first of many collaborations TAB x TAB will have with local artists and up-and-coming designers — but they lived up to their reputation, and I took even more photos of my piccolo than usual. Exercising great restraint (I'm saving for a big, upcoming foreign trip), I didn't buy anything...this time.



The coffee tasted as good as it looked, the creamy, nutty notes of the espresso coming through very nicely. Then the avocado on toast arrived and it looked just as amazing — so much so that the woman next to me asked if she could take a photo of it (at least she asked; another customer placed his coffee on the floor (!) to photograph it, making even me feel rather less extreme in my camera-eats-first philosophy). I would never have thought to combine cashew with coriander and lime in an avocado dressing, but the flavours combined superbly and the dish might even be one of my all-time-favourite avocado on toasts in London. Great care had clearly gone into the preparation of both the coffee and the food, which were presented impeccably despite the constant stream of customers.


After I had finished, I took a few more photos and browsed the 'shop' section, which includes a few lifestyle goods as well as retail bags of Bocca and Ozone coffee, and then rejoined the queue at the counter. I wanted to get a filter coffee to take away, but had clearly hit peak brunch time and after waiting a while, I began to run out of time and decided to settle for my excellent single-coffee experience. Although there are plenty of great coffee shops closer to home, TAB x TAB was well worth the journey and I hope to return again soon.



TAB x TAB. 14-16 Westbourne Grove, London, W2 5RH (Tube: Bayswater or Royal Oak). Website. Twitter. Instagram.