The third shortlist in the 2021 Coffee Spot Awards is for the “Coffee Spot with the Best Basement” Award which went to Short + Stout in 2020. As regular readers will know, I have a soft spot for Coffee Spots with good basements. To some, a basement is a dark, sometimes dingy, cramped space. However, when they are at their best, basements are cosy, welcoming spaces that provide the perfect spot to curl up with your coffee.

This award celebrates those Coffee Spots with outstanding basements, the sort of places you want to go and spend all day in! It also includes those Coffee Spots which, while not technically basements, have that basement-like feel to them. I must confess that theis year I was struggling a little for entries on this shortlist, so I may have stretched that definition more than I normally do.

Continue reading →

The second shortlist in the 2021 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Best Takeaway Coffee” Award, won last year by Canopy Coffee. It recognises those places which, braving the elements, still produce an excellent cup of coffee. This includes coffee carts, coffee stalls, those Coffee Spots which are so small that they only serve takeaway coffee and those Coffee Spots where I regularly get my takeaway coffee (even if they offer a regular sit-in option).

This year things were slightly different due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many coffee shops were only offering takeaway for much of the year, I wasn’t travelling a lot, so this year’s shortlist is fairly concise affair.

Continue reading →

The first shortlist for the 2021 Coffee Spot Awards is the “Most Unlikely Place to Find a Coffee Spot” Award, won in 2020 by Heartwork Coffee Bar. Finding Coffee Spots in cities such as New York, Edinburgh or Manchester is to be expected. However, while good Coffee Spots are everywhere, some of them are in very unexpected places, both geographically and in terms of setting.

This Award is very much defined by the nominees on the shortlist. Some of these are geographical, a reward for bringing great coffee to unexpected places. Others are a recognition of a great or unusual setting for a Coffee Spot.

Continue reading →

Merry Christmas to all my readers old and new! Once again, it’s time for the Coffee Spot Awards, now into their TENTH year! The Awards allow me to reflect on all the great places I’ve written about this year and to give them all some more well-deserved time in the limelight. As usual, there are 20 Awards, the shortlists being publishing between now and New Year’s Eve, with the winners announced on New Year’s Day.

Last year, I noted that 2020 had easily been the strangest year in the Coffee Spot’s history. In some ways, 2021 has topped that, although in other ways, having made it through 2020, I had some idea as to what to expect. Writing a blog about visiting coffee shops when you can’t visit any is always going to be tricky, although that’s nothing compared to trying to run a coffee shop in the middle of a pandemic. On the plus side, having spent 15 months hardly going any further than the hills behind my house, I did manage two big trips, one to Iceland in July and the other to America in November.

Thanks to everyone who’s shared some or all of the year with me by reading my posts on the Coffee Spot, following me on Twitter, liking my Facebook page, or looking at my Instagram pictures. While I do this for the love of coffee, it means a lot that you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you, it really would be pointless.

Continue reading →

Happy New Year to all my followers old and new! As we get 2021 underway, here are the winners of the ninth annual Brian’s Coffee Spot Awards. As before, there are 20 Awards, celebrating all the wonderful Coffee Spots I wrote about during 2020. The shortlists for all 20 Awards were announced between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve and now we have the winners!

Before we go on, I know I’ve said this before, but a big thank you to everyone who’s visited the Coffee Spot, followed me on Twitter, liked my Facebook page and looked at my pictures on Instagram. While I do this for the love of coffee, it means a lot to me that so many of you take the time to read and comment on my writing. Without you, it really would be pointless.

Continue reading →

So, here it is, the final Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2020, the only one that you, my readers, decide. It’s the “Most Popular Coffee Spot” Award, which is based on the total number of views received by each Coffee Spot in 2020.

Last year this was won last year by Omotesando Koffee, London with 806 views. This year’s shortlist features the 10 most viewed Coffee Spots, four of which are from my hometown of Guildford, with two more from Caversham. Only five are what could be described as classic Coffee Spot write ups, with two COVID-19 updates, a Meet the Roaster and two Saturday Supplements (one of which is really about travel).

Continue reading →

Welcome to the penultimate Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2020, the Brian’s Coffee Spot Special Award, which was won last year by Kafi. In past year’s, this has been a special award for those Coffee Spots which don’t quite fit into the other categories, but which nonetheless I absolutely love… It’s also a chance for me to recognise and reward those wonderful Coffee Spots that I come across during the year and which mean something special to me.

This year’s Award is slightly different in that I’ve narrowed the criteria to be those Coffee Spots whose response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been outstanding in some way.

Continue reading →

Welcome to the next Coffee Spot Awards Shortlist for 2020, the “Most Passionate About Coffee” Award, which was won in 2019 by Coffee Curiosity. For me, this is one of the most important awards, and also one of the hardest to judge, which is why I’ve left it to the last day.

It’s not just about the coffee, it’s also about people who love and care about coffee. Everyone who I’ve covered in the Coffee Spot is passionate about coffee and one of the great things is how much love there is out there, both for the coffee and for those who make it. However, those shortlisted for this award stand out from the crowd.

Continue reading →

We enter the final day of the 2020 Coffee Spot Awards shortlists with the “Best Breakfast” Award, which in 2019 went to SLOW Café. Along with cake, breakfast has a special place in my heart.

It used to be that I rarely got up and out of the house early enough to get to places before they stop serving breakfast. However, in recent years I’ve been travelling so much that this is usually a healthy shortlist.

This year, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve had fewer breakfasts than usual, but, helped by those wonderful places that serve all-day breakfasts, I’ve managed to get a decent shortlist together. In fact, given how often I have things from the breakfast menu for lunch, I wonder if I should rename this award “Best Brunch”…

Continue reading →

I present the final shortlist of the day, which is for another of my favourite Coffee Spot Awards, that of “Coffee Spot with the Happiest Staff”. Last year it was won by Ngopi. In my opinion, staff are probably the most over-looked part of any Coffee Spot. Good staff can make a place and bad staff, no matter how great the coffee and wonderful the location, can kill a place.

Everywhere that features in the Coffee Spot has great staff, but these were exceptional, with some infectiously happy staff. However, this award isn’t just for happy staff; it’s for any staff who go that extra mile to make their coffee shop a special place.

Continue reading →