A guide to the world’s best cafes and bakeries
Guides
Where to go, and why
Turin — The Counter
The counter where Turin has taken its coffee since 1763
Four generations behind one marble bar, a drink that has never changed, and the quiet argument about whether the third of them ever really followed the recipe.
12 min
Copenhagen — Craft
A bakery that runs entirely on last year's grain
What happens to a loaf when you refuse to buy flour from anyone you have not met.
9 min
Mexico City — Rooms
Twelve tables, one window, no menu at all
On the Roma Norte room that has never printed a price and has never once been empty.
11 min
Lisbon — Craft
The custard tart that survived a monastery closing
One recipe, three families, and two hundred years of refusing to write it down.
8 min
Melbourne — Roasters
The roaster that stopped chasing the harvest
Why buying the same farm every year turned out to matter more than buying the best lot.
10 min
Tokyo — Rooms
Nine seats, one siphon, and no music after ten
The kissaten rules that look like eccentricity until you sit down and understand them.
12 min
Kyoto — Profile
The tea master who refuses to open before noon
Forty years at one counter, and a theory about afternoon light he has never written down.
14 minI have measured out my life with coffee spoons.T. S. Eliot,The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915
In the Case
What is in the case this week
Europe is made up of coffee houses, of cafés.George Steiner,The Idea of Europe, 2004