(The Irish angle was one of convivial spirit rather than ribald boozing.) The duo first met working at Caravan, transposing their formative days there into a buzzy, composed corner site at Mansion House, where they continue to serve an illustrious menu of international beans: Switch Coffee from Tokyo or Cornwall’s Origin beans, say.Ī dinky takeaway (there’s a sole bench outside) and roasters on the side of Peckham Rye, Old Spike is indisputably great, but its true USP is its community-minded model. The melding of a meticulous Aussie café and an Irish pub might sound jarring, but such was the concept behind Rosslyn, with founders James Hennebry and Mat Russell drawing on their respective heritages to create one of London’s best micro-chains.

It’s still catnip for roving bean fiends: an Antipodean-style powerhouse now with two locations (a second branch, on Fitzrovia’s Eastcastle Street, opened in the mid 2010s), with an ever-changing cast of guest beans from estimable global roasters – Australia’s Proud Mary and Exeter’s Crankhouse Coffee are two recent, if arbitrary, examples. Opened by Australian emigré Peter Dore-Smith way back in the heyday of 2009, Kaffeine was (and remains) a pioneer in London’s specialty scene. Second: their homemade Coffee Sriracha, a piquant, caffeine-infused hot sauce revered by London food nerds (not least when it’s splashed across grilled aubergine and tahini on Coombeshead Farm sourdough, a highlight of the ace lunch menu). First: an egalitarian approach to coffee at odds with the specialty world’s latent snobbery, serving everything from no-name lattes to complex, double-anaerobic-fermentation coffees. The appeal of Catalyst – a cactus-flecked, coworker-filled spot opened by Alexander Gkikas in 2016 – is twofold.

Despite their evergreen status, they still occasionally throw a caffeine curveball: their Faema experience – a collaboration with Square Mile founder James Hoffmann – lets bean enthusiasts compare the profiles of espressos made with both a 1958 Faema lever and modern Victoria Arduino Black Eagle machine. They serve Square Mile, as well as working with international roasters like Manhattan, La Cabra, Koppi and Tim Wendelboe.

A banquette-dotted Leather Lane staple, Prufrock is still going strong in its twelfth year.

Autumn rose boutique berwick