They’ve got all the ingredients: the 3-group Senesso Cyncra (nearly the best machine available), the Anfim grinder, the Square Mile spring blend, all top-notch and organic and well-intending and specially sourced and what-have-you. So why do I feel like I’m sitting in Eat? Farm is catering for the Farringdon lunch market, which is what I’d do if, um, I sold lunches in Farringdon. This compromises the atmosphere. That would be a bit sad if it didn’t mean they seem to be doing a roaring trade (I hope I’m right). Anyway, the ingredients are all brought together with reasonable skill int...

With the exception of the Side Café in Newcastle (love more than judgement), the Milk Bar is my favourite place to drink coffee. Most of what I’d say has already been said by others, many times. This is a real coffee shop, manned by people who understand coffee. They know what’s in their blend (a bespoke one from the impossible-to-say-enough-good-things-about Square Mile), they have ideas for how they might change it to address its shortcomings, they know how many days to wait after roasting to get their beans at their best, they adjust their grind when the weather changes, they throw the...

Luciano Franchi, Caffe Vergnano UK’s Managing Director says: “we held to one basic premise: if the Italians possess a coffee culture at its zenith, then the English possess it at its nadir” … “baristas are trained for three months”…and “we stand head and shoulders above all the coffee bars in London”.

Let’s imagine for a second that this isn’t annoying (which it is), that Italy is the zenith of coffee culture (which it isn’t), and that Britain is the nadir of coffee culture (which it isn’t, quite, even when you exclude Aussies and Kiwis). I’ll take these stateme...