Welcome to another Brian’s Travel Spot, the occasional series documenting my increasing travel experiences. This year it’s gone from principally recording the trips themselves (its original purpose), to discussing the various flights I’ve been taking, starting with a pair of flights out to Phoenix and culminating in three trips from Manchester to Chicago, each one flying a different route with a different airline, United, British Airways and American Airlines. In between, when returning from Vietnam, I flew long-haul flight in business class for the first time.

This, my final trip of the year, sees me heading back to Shanghai for work. It also involves flying both legs in business class for the first time. This is largely down to self-preservation: due to prior commitments, I was busy the preceding weekend, so I had to forgo my normal practice of flying out midweek the week before my meeting and giving myself three or four days to get over the jet lag. Instead I flew out on Sunday night, arrived on Monday afternoon and went into a four day meeting starting at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning. Therefore, sleeping on the flight became a necessity, which meant flying business class…

Welcome to another Brian’s Travel Spot. In case you’ve not been paying attention, I’m in Shanghai, having flown out two weeks ago for a week of work, followed by a week of sightseeing and Coffee Spotting. Having visited Shanghai last year, I was keen to explore a little bit more of China and, buoyed by travels by train in both Japan and Vietnam earlier this year, I contemplated taking the train to Beijing.

A little bit of research on the ever-useful The Man in Seat 61 showed that the train was considerably cheaper than flying and a lot more convenient. Not only that, as long as I caught the right train, I would be travelling on the world’s second-fastest passenger rail service, which appealed to the geek in me, especially since I’d already travelled on the world’s fastest passenger rail service when I caught the Maglev train serving Shanghai Pudong airport.

After further research, I decided to catch a regular high-speed service from Shanghai to Beijing on Saturday, the day after my meeting ended, returning four days later by sleeper, leaving Beijing on Wednesday night, arriving in Shanghai on Thursday morning, giving me three days to explore before flying home.

On my recent trip to China, I spent a few days exploring Beijing, taking the high-speed train from Shanghai, which I recounted in an earlier Travel Spot. In today’s instalment of Brian’s Travel Spot, I recount my return journey from Beijing to Shanghai. Having gone up on the world’s fastest inter-city passenger service, I decided to do things a little differently on my return, instead taking the overnight sleeper. Although a little more expensive than the train up, when you consider it saved me a night in a hotel, it was still very cost-effective and far more efficient than flying!

Once again I’m indebted to the ever-useful The Man in Seat 61 for all my pre-trip research. There are four sleeper services from Beijing to Shanghai each night, once conventional service which leaves first at 7.31, and arrives some 15 hours later in Shanghai, and three high-speed services, which take 10 hours. One of these leaves at 7.34, while the other two leave at 9.16 and 9.23. I decided to catch the last of these, allowing myself a leisurely evening in Beijing after a day spent visiting coffee shops, and arriving at the civilised hour of 9.13 the following morning.

Since I’m about to embark on my latest adventure (two weeks in Miami, followed by two weeks in Arizona), I thought I’d better finish writing up my final set of flights from last year. In the first part of this instalment of Brian’s Travel Spot, my occasional series documenting my increasing travel experiences, I told you about my experiences flying to Shanghai in business class with China Eastern. This one’s all about the flight back.

I spent a week in Shanghai for work before catching the world’s fastest inter-city train to Beijing, where I spent a few days, then caught the sleeper back to Shanghai, where I spent a few more days before flying back to London on the equivalent return flight with China Eastern (which has one flight a day between London and Shanghai, as do British Airways and Virgin).

As I had on the way out, I was flying business class, the big difference being that while I flew out overnight, I was returning on a day-time flight, leaving Shanghai at 13.00 local time and arriving in London almost 13 hours later at 17.45 in the evening. Rather than sleeping, my plan was to spend the flight working…

AUNN Café & Co (an abbreviation of All U Need Now), which opened in early 2015, is a café, lifestyle store/design showroom and gallery space spread over three floors underneath a hotel on Shanghai’s busy West Nanjing Road. I was tipped off to its presence by Jennifer, a Shanghai resident who I met in And Coffee, and who gave me a long list of places to try.

AUNN café itself is the largest of the speciality coffee shops that I visited on my trip in 2016, spread across the ground floor of the building, the entire front given over to windows, complete with a coffee terrace outside on the busy road. When the weather’s warm but less humid than the October day I was there, the windows can be pulled back to create an open terrace.

The coffee comes from Little Bean in Pudong, with green beans sourced from Nordic Approach. There’s a standard, espresso-based menu, plus cold-brew and what AUNN calls “naked” coffee, filter to you and me. There are two single-origins available via the V60, as well as batch-brew if you’re in a hurry. There is also a small selection of western-style cakes and pastries if you’re hungry.

BLUEKING Coffee was a chance discovery while hunting down Manner Coffee on the same road on my first visit to Shanghai in 2016. It’s part of a cluster of coffee shops, including Lanna Coffee to the southwest, Sumerian Coffee to the north and, on the same east-west stretch, both branches of Manner Coffee. It also has the distinction, along with Sumerian, of being the only Shanghai coffee shop that I’ve visited on all three of my Shanghai trips.

When I first discovered BLUEKING, it had only been open for six months and, despite its small size, was roasting all its own coffee in the front of the shop. By my return a year later, it had a second shop (just past Manner Coffee on Fengxian Road) and a dedicated roastery, the original branch now forming a cute coffee bar, serving espresso and pour-over, plus a small selection of cakes.

When I first came to Shanghai in 2016, the first speciality coffee shop I visited was Sumerian Coffee where I enjoyed my first taste of Chinese-grown coffee, from Yunnan Province in the south of the country. What I didn’t realise at the time was that, not far from Sumerian Coffee, stands Lanna Coffee, which embodies the whole farm-to-cup principle that I first saw in Vietnam, where Oriberry Coffee is probably the best proponent. You see, Lanna Coffee doesn’t just serve Yunnan coffee, it grows, processes and roasts it in Yunnan. Coffee doesn’t get much more direct trade than this.

Lanna Coffee occupies a small spot at the end of a row of equally small coffee shops (and one barbers/coffee shop). The majority of the seating is outside, in a sheltered, semi-enclosed area, with the coffee shop proper at the back, behind glass double doors. In all, you might seat 14 people if everyone shuffles up.

Despite this small size, Lanna Coffee serves a decent, western-style breakfast/brunch menu, plus a small selection of cakes, to go with its coffee. There’s the Red Lantern blend on espresso and a range of single-origin/single-estate Yunnan coffees to buy or to enjoy as a pour-over.

I first became aware of Little Bean on my first trip to Shanghai in October 2016, when I tried its coffee at AUNN Café & Co. On my return in  December 2017, Little Bean’s flagship, Little Bean Roastery, was one of that trip’s highlights. These days, there are five Little Beans, but back then, there were just two, the second being the Little Bean Coffee Museum, located in the basement of the K11 Mall, right in the heart of downtown Shanghai.

I managed to visit in 2017, but didn’t get a chance to write it up, so on my return in 2019, I made a point of visiting, even though modern shopping malls are very low on my list of places I want to spend any time in. However, the lure of Little Bean, tucked away in the basement, was too much to resist (and the good news is that you can get there straight from the Metro, so you can bypass K11 altogether).

What you get is the usual Little Bean offering of a Brazilian single-origin on espresso, plus another Brazilian single-origin on pour-over through the V60, where it’s joined by a selection of single-origins sourced from Nordic Approach.

Finding today’s Coffee Spot, Little Bean, was a combination of good luck, guesswork and determination. I first came across Little Bean’s coffee at AUNN Café & Co. on my first trip to Shanghai in October 2016. Back then I was told that the roastery/coffee shop was in Pudong, so when I found myself back in Shanghai the following year, staying/working in Pudong, I was determined to track Little Bean down.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Little Bean occupies a unit in an outdoor mall on Jinyan Road, across the river from Century Square. A spacious coffee shop, complete with a dinky Probat roaster behind the counter, occupies the ground floor, while upstairs there’s a training school and on-site bakery.

Turning to the coffee, Little Bean has a pair of single-origins on espresso (it also has two espresso machines, but I never worked out if the machines/origins were paired in any way) and another five on pour-over through the V60, plus you can buy the beans. As well as freshly-roasted coffee, you can have freshly-baked bread, with a wide variety to choose from, including croissants and various pastries. Finally, there’s a very tempting array of cakes/desserts to choose from if you want something sweet.

The original Manner Coffee on Nanyang Road in the Jing’An neighbourhood was one of my finds from my first visit to Shanghai, part of my first round-the-world trip in October 2016. When I returned at the end of 2017, I discovered that a second branch of Manner Coffee had opened on Fengxian Road, just a couple of blocks to the east of the original. Naturally I had to check it out.

Whereas the original is a hole-the-wall, literally a window in the side of a building, opening onto the street, the new Manner Coffee is much bigger, although it’s still tiny. This time it occupies the front half of a shop, with the rear section home to a small restaurant. The operation’s very similar though, with a window at the end of the counter opening on the street, where you order.

The offering’s also very similar, Manner roasting all its own coffee, with a blend on espresso and up to seven single-origins on pour-over through the V60. Naturally, all the beans are available to buy.

Seesaw is a roastery and a chain of seven Shanghai coffee shops, although this one, Seesaw 433, is the original, having opened in 2012. Like most of the places I visited in Shanghai, it helps to know where it is, only more so in this case, since it’s at the back of a design centre, with no obvious signs on the street. If I hadn’t have known it was there, I would have missed it completely.

However, it would have been a shame to walk past since it’s a beautiful spot, with an enclosed courtyard, complete with glass roof. Perhaps because the courtyard is completely enclosed, it’s no smoking, but despite this, it can still get very hot and humid. If you want air-conditioning (or power outlets for your laptop), you’ll need to head inside the coffee shop proper, off to one side of the courtyard.

Seesaw roasts all its own coffee in a dedicated facility. There’s a seasonal house-blend and single-origin on espresso, with six or seven further single-origins on pour-over/cold brew, with all the typical origins represented. You can also buy the beans to take home with you, while if you’re hungry, there’s a selection of western-style cakes.

March 2019: Sad to say, Seesaw 433 has closed. It looks to me as if the whole building has been vacated rather than Seesaw itself moving/closing down.

My first taste of speciality coffee in Shanghai came from a chance discovery on twitter/Google maps when trying to find a coffee shop that someone in Hong Kong had recommended to me. I’ll say this for the Shanghai coffee scene: there are lots of great places out there, but they take some finding. I was very reliant on people that I met helping me out with directions and suggestions.

Sumerian Coffee is a roaster and coffee shop, which also specialises in bagels. Like most of the roaster/coffee shops I came across, Sumerian does its roasting in an off-site facility. The coffee shop itself is a fairly spacious, bustling spot, kitted out almost entirely in wood. While it wouldn’t have looked out of place in London, there was something of the local character about it.

Turning to the coffee, Sumerian has a house-blend on espresso, a very impressive-looking La Marzocco Strada taking pride of place on the counter. There are five single-origins, including a decaf, available as pour-over, plus cold-brew and various coffee-over-ice options. For food, there are the aforementioned bagels, plus a range of (western) cakes and homemade cookies. You can also buy any of the beans in 200g bags.

The Wudaoying Hutong in Beijing, northeast of the centre near the 2^nd Ring Road, is a hot bed of speciality coffee. Home to last week’s Coffee Spot, Metal Hands Coffee Co, as well a second branch, Metal Hands White Space, which is a few doors down to the west, if you head a few doors east, you’ll come to today’s Coffee Spot, Barista Speciality Coffee & Roasters. And if you thought that Metal Hands and White Space were small, then Barista Speciality Coffee is even smaller, by some considerable margin!

Despite this, it still manages to offer a house-blend and single-origin on espresso, plus four single-origin pour-overs, all roasted in-house. There’s also cold brew, plus a choice of croissant, bagel or fruit cheesecake. All of this is served in a long, thin space with just enough room for the counter on the left and a small corridor on the right!

Metal Hands Coffee Co is a small Beijing roaster/coffee shop chain which started in July 2016 with this, the original. When I visited, exactly a year ago in December 2017, following a tip-off that morning from the barista at Soloist Coffee, it had already expanded to four coffee shops, all in a small area in the Andingmen Residential District, centred on Wudaoying Hutong, a narrow old-fashioned alley which is home to Metal Hands.

There’s not much to Metal Hands, just a simple store front, with the counter on the right, and seating on the left, plus a small seating area in an annex at the back. However, that doesn’t stop Metal Hands offering a standard espresso-based menu using a house-blend, plus four single-origins which are available through the V60 and as cold brew. The espresso by the way, is pulled on an old-school lever machine after which the shop/chain is named.

This is the last of a sequence of three Saturday-on-a-Wednesday Shorts from my trip to Beijing this time last year. Metal Hands Coffee Co. is a rapidly-expanding coffee shops/roaster chain which, having only started in 2016, already had four shops by the time I visited in December 2017. These are all centred on Wudaoying Hutong, a narrow old-fashioned alley in the Andingmen Residential District, home to the original Metal Hands.

The subject of today’s Coffee Spot, Metal Hands White Space, is just a few doors along Wudaoying Hutong from the original. It’s a similar size and shape, but otherwise they are like chalk and cheese, with White Space taking a very clean, modern (and above all white) look to its décor. The coffee offering, however, is the same, with a standard espresso-based menu using a house-blend, plus four single-origins, which are available either as cold brew or through the V60.

Soloist Coffee Co. was my first experience of speciality coffee (or any sort of coffee, for that matter) in Beijing, unless you count the coffee I was making for myself in my hotel room. I’d tracked it down on the internet, picking it largely for its location, near Tiananmen Square where it would provide a useful break from the hard work of being a tourist.

Located on the narrow, straight and surprisingly low-rise Yangmeizhu Byway, the whole area around Soloist is worth a visit for its own sake, representing a slice of old Beijing, albeit one which is being rapidly gentrified by the likes of Soloist. The coffee shop itself occupies a two-storey building on the north side of the alley, catching the sun, which, during the winter at least, bathes the interior in a warm light. There’s plenty of seating both downstairs and in the delightful upstairs room, plus there’s a large balcony at the front overlooking the street.

The coffee’s all roasted in-house at Soloist’s other site, with an espresso blend and several single-origins available on pour-over through the V60. There’s also a western-influenced all-day brunch menu, although all-day is stretching it since Soloist doesn’t open until noon!

Finding out about new coffee shops, particularly when bereft of my usual tools of twitter and Google Maps, can be tricky. Under these circumstances, I tend to fall back on Method #1: word of mouth, which is how I found out about today’s Coffee Spot, The Corner. Having tracked down Soloist Coffee Co., the barista there put me onto Metal Hands, while the barista in Metal Hands told me about The Corner. So it goes in Beijing, and China in general.

Pleasing located on a corner, The Corner is an interesting spot, all concrete floors and industrial, metal interiors, spread out over three floors, connected by a staircase at the back. It’s also the first coffee shop I know of that’s located within a car repair workshop!

The offering is based around a simple, espresso-based menu, although there are no flat whites or piccolos, rather it is lattes and cappuccinos. This is backed up with a large selection of single-origin coffees which are available on pour-over, which seems to conform to the standard in Beijing, where a (often darker-roasted) blend is offered on espresso, with single-origins on pour-over. There’s also a limited selection of very tempting cakes if you’re hungry.