The best coffee in London
21 places
Algerian Coffee Stores
£Trading on Old Compton Street since 1887, selling beans over the counter with an espresso hatch and nowhere at all to sit.
Antipodea
££All-day Australian cooking that runs from brunch through laksa and Thai squid, which is a far broader range than Richmond's pub-and-Italian default.
Beany Green Little Venice
££Australian brunch on the towpath with a big canal-side terrace, and the easiest good breakfast within walking distance of Paddington station.
Caravan
£An all-day kitchen with its own roastery attached - the room most responsible for London's brunch-and-flat-white format.
Carbon Kopi
£Moved from New Zealand to Hammersmith in 2019 and has been on the national best-of lists ever since.
Catalyst
£A pared-back Scandi room near Prufrock, and named among the best coffee shops in the UK for 2026.
Climpson & Sons
£On Broadway Market since before the street became what it is now, roasting its own and still busiest on Saturdays.
Ginger & White
£A small Perrins Court cafe doing serious coffee and a proper British breakfast, and the default Hampstead meeting place for anyone who lives there.
Kaffeine
£Australian-run and one of the shops that brought antipodean coffee culture to London - the food counter is as good as the espresso.
Monmouth Coffee Company
£Roasting since 1978 and still the default answer to where to get coffee in London - the Borough Market shop has a queue out of the door most mornings.
The Borough queue is longest at weekend market hours. Covent Garden is quieter.
Old Spike
£A Peckham roastery that employs and trains people who have experienced homelessness - the coffee stands on its own, which is rather the point.
Origin Coffee Roasters
£Roasted in Cornwall and poured in a clean, modern Shoreditch room - a favourite of the people who take this most seriously.
Ozone Coffee Roasters
£A working roastery in the basement with a full kitchen above it - closer to an all-day restaurant than a coffee shop.
Prufrock Coffee
£The Leather Lane shop that trained a generation of London baristas - it runs its own training centre, and most serious coffee people in the city passed through it.
Redemption Roasters
£The beans are roasted inside prisons by people the company then trains and employs on release - a coffee chain built entirely around reducing reoffending.
Rosslyn Coffee
£A tiny City counter that consistently tops London coffee rankings and has almost nowhere to sit.
The Attendant
£Built inside a restored Victorian public lavatory, with the original porcelain urinals turned into the counter you sit at.
The Café at Clifton Nurseries
££A café inside a glasshouse in the grounds of Clifton Nurseries, a working garden centre on the same Maida Vale site since 1851. Brunch and lunch dishes, bakes and cakes, with a terrace outside.
Daytime only: Monday to Saturday 9:00-17:30, Sunday 10:30-16:30. Typically £10-20 a head.
The Yurt Café
£A working cafe inside an actual Mongolian yurt, in the grounds of a Limehouse charity that has been on the site since 1950. Full English, focaccias and Mission Coffee Works espresso, served under a felt roof.
A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE, not a restaurant group - profits go to the Royal Foundation of St Katharine's community work in Limehouse. Daytime 9:00-17:00; evening service runs 17:00-20:00 Monday to Saturday with themed nights and live music on Thursdays.
WatchHouse
£Started in a nineteenth-century watchman's hut on Bermondsey Street and has become the most polished coffee group in London.
Workshop Coffee
£A roaster's shop where the filter list changes constantly and the staff will talk you through it if you want.