Cafés & Coffee
Crema tells you less than it looks like it does
The foam on an espresso is carbon dioxide in an emulsion, and reading it as a quality mark leads people astray.
Cafés & Coffee
How coffee works here, what to order, and where to sit for an hour.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Cafés & Coffee
Water is the ingredient nobody adjusts
A cup of coffee is overwhelmingly water, and the minerals in that water decide how much of the bean ever makes it out. Most cafes…
Cafés & Coffee
Why the traditional cup is a blend rather than a single origin
Blending is not a way of hiding cheap coffee. It is how a roaster makes the same cup available every week of the year, which is…
Cafés & Coffee
How a cup cools, and why the last sip tastes different
Temperature changes which flavours you can perceive, and a small cup loses heat fast. That is why the local habit is to drink it…
Cafés & Coffee
The espresso machine is a boiler with a queue problem
Almost everything that goes wrong in a busy cafe is a heat problem. Understanding how the machine stores and loses heat explains…
Cafés & Coffee
The milk ladder, from a stain to a full glass
Local milk coffees are not variations on a theme but points on a scale, and the scale is simply how much milk goes in. Knowing the…
Cafés & Coffee
Which rooms are built for sitting an hour
Some cafes are designed to move you through and some are designed to hold you. The furniture, the light and the counter depth tell…
Cafés & Coffee
What a cafe actually pays for, and why the cup stays cheap
The coffee itself is a small part of the cost of serving it. Rent, labour and habit set the price, which is why it barely moves…
Cafés & Coffee
How to tell a serious cafe from a merely busy one
Queues measure location, not quality. There are half a dozen visible habits that separate a place that cares about the cup from one…