This is a project I have been long promising and even longer imagining; finally, it’s here!

My guide to London will list five top recommendations on where to eat, drink and play in London and more. If you would like my recommendations on something specific, find my email at the bottom of this post.

There is no shortage of things on offer in London, but you can spend an awful lot of money on very poor-quality or basic food, coffee and experiences.

If you are a first-timer, regular or local to London, this guide is for you because the five central premises that dictate my recommendations are:

• Australian-level standards: Food, wine and coffee will be assessed to Australian tastes and expectations

• Consistency: If something makes my list, rest assured I’ve visited it frequently and received the same quality time after time

• Proximity: This guide will unashamedly focus on Zone 1, where I believe the need to fossick to find London’s gems is most acute

• Value: This guide won’t penny-pinch, but it does not intend to send you to Michelin and overpriced restaurants for no point. London is an expensive city, so if you are going to spend on meals and coffee out, you may as well make sure you paid for an experience that was memorable and worth every penny

• Original, unique and boutique: London is blighted by mass chains. Whatever you do, I beg you to avoid them at all costs, and I am here to help you avoid the chain trap and find meals you will go home and brag about

In 2010, I returned to London for the first time since I spent a year here after finishing high school and starting university. I had just joined the Canberra press gallery and was on a long break after spending the entire 2010 election campaign on the road.

Around this time, I had switched from drinking tea to coffee and found London’s coffee offerings horrifically limited. Back then, it felt like it was just Flat White and Sacred, and you really had to travel and hunt down Australian-style coffee. It was an almost scarring experience and every trip back until I finally moved here had to factor in finding decent coffee.

Happily, proper coffee has exploded across London in the last decade, and you will not find it difficult to find a decent cup amid the Prets and Costa Coffees. But still, there is good, and then there is the best.

My top five coffee destinations in London are below.

1. WatchHouse.

WatchHouse. tops my list for London’s best coffee, hands-down. As soon as you walk into WatchHouse. you know it’s serious about coffee. The architecture is clean and minimalist; everything screams you are here to drink coffee and little else.

Wooden shelves line the store, and while the tables and chairs are all wooden and seemingly uninviting, there is something quite calming about the coffee experience in WatchHouse.

WatchHouse. was founded by Roland Horne, who started the cafe in a former 19th-century watch house in trendy Bermondsey, south-east London, in 2014. He said the gap in the market he sought to fill was a ‘holistic’ experience of coffee.

I discovered WatchHouse quite late in the game, I think, after Covid, which says something about its concept and success: it stayed small and focused, perfecting one thing it wanted to do well, coffee, before expanding. They didn’t start offering brunch until two years later, and even today, the food offerings are relatively limited. You come here for coffee, not so much to eat, although you can.

This ethos lives on, as even today they divide their cafes into brunch and espresso houses.

In 2020, they began their roastery, and this is a great cafe worth visiting if you are in the area. Every coffee is perfect. I have never in my life had a bad cup here, and the consistency is excellent no matter which cafe or ‘House’ you visit.

WatchHouse serves everything from batch brew to cold brew to espressos, matcha lattes, tea and more.

A flat white sets you back £4.5. Collect loyalty stamps on the WatchHouse. app.

Find WatchHouse at more than 30 locations around the world. Favourites in London include: Covent Garden, Bishopsgate, St Mary Axe, Borough, Bermondsey and Bond Street.

https://watchhouse.com/

2. Daisy Green

The Daisy Green story is as Australian-done-good overseas as you can get.

Established by Prue Freeman, who began selling banana bread and coffee from a bike cart when the only coffee available in the Square Mile, where she worked, was Starbucks and Pret.

Daisy Green, her first brick-and-mortar cafe, began in Marble Arch in 2013. She now has more than 20 locations across London, making Australian coffee ubiquitous in all the places you find yourself in London.

Each Green has a unique first name, usually related to the location and carries a unique art signature thanks to Prue’s husband, business partner and art connoisseur Tom. Playful and buzzy, the Green cafes target an affordable price point with their menus, although the £5 lamingtons are eyewateringly high. They are very popular brunch spots, and some attract a younger crowd than others.

A flat white sets you back £3.9 with no extra charge for oat milk, making it one of the most affordable coffees in London. Collect loyalty stamps on the Daisy Green app.

Find a Daisy Green cafe at more than 20 locations. Favourites in London include: Ziggy Green in Regent Street and Larry’s underneath the Portrait Gallery.

https://www.daisygreenfood.com/

3. Roasting Plant Coffee Shop

Roasting Plant Coffee Shop brings the theatre to your daily cup of coffee. Ordering your coffee is a sensory, if not slightly gimmicky, experience thanks to founder Mike Caswell’s Javabot system.

Beans are stored in clear canisters along the wall and are pushed through the pneumatic system overhead for roasting. It means there are usually several bean types on offer and the baristas will always have a recommendation handy to your taste profile.

The only downside is that all those beans rattling through plastic tubes over your head can get a bit noisy. This is not the place for a quiet or serious work meeting.

Compared to WatchHouse. and Daisy, Roasting Plant’s decor is less upscale and far more everyday and simplistic, as opposed to WatchHouse’s elegant calm.

A flat white sets you back £3.65. Collect loyalty stamps on the Rwrd app.

Find Roasting Plant Coffee at five locations in London. Favourites are London Bridge and The Strand.

https://roastingplant.co.uk/

4. Kiss the Hippo

Kiss the Hippo meets somewhere between WatchHouse. and Roasting Plant. It has just 12 locations across London, making it less ubiquitous than WatchHouse. but more available than Roasting Plant.

Kiss the Hippo is also aiming for a coffee-only aesthetic; it does serve a few pastries, cakes and cookies but focuses predominantly on good coffee. It serves espresso, drip and cold coffees and offers a choice of beans.

Established in 2018, it is a relative latecomer to the UK’s speciality coffee boom but focuses on being carbon neutral.

They take coffee seriously and you will not walk out of here disappointed with your brew.

A flat white sets you back £4.2. Collect loyalty points through their website and stamps on the Rwrd app.

Find Kiss the Hippo at 12 locations in London. Soho is the best for the central London tourist.

https://kissthehippo.com/

5. Grind

Grind pitches to the same market as Daisy. The vibe is buzzy, fun and noisy and splits into three different types of venues: coffee trucks, coffee shops and restaurants and cocktail bars.

It’s the place where your afternoon cup might turn into an espresso martini and more.

I have a special spot in my heart for Grind because when I moved to the UK in 2016, Grind was one of the few places putting Australian-style coffee and brunch on the London menu.

It has now been completely overtaken by the explosion of look-alikes, but Grind is a consistent stayer. Founded by one half of the Bodyrockers, Australian DJ and musician Kaz James, and entrepreneur David Abrahamovitch, Grind has gone on to supply coffee to Soho House and British Airways and is heavily focused on retail offerings like canned iced coffees.

They began in Shoreditch in 2011, right at the start of good coffee’s birth in London, but happily, their coffee has never suffered as a result of their expansion.

A flat white starts at £4.25. Collect loyalty points on the Grind app.

Find Grind at 14 locations in London. My favourite is London Bridge.

https://grind.co.uk/