Every Londoner has their favourite coffee shop. It could be a local chain café with a nostalgic taste and consistent brews or a specialty spot with pour-over coffees and expertly-made cortados. Regardless of your favourite, it’s inarguable that London is home to some incredible coffee shops. Recently a Fitzrovia spot, Workshop Coffee, was named one of the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops. There’s only one issue… It’s been closed for almost a year.
Now, Workshop didn’t quite make it to the top of the list. But it made it to a pretty impressive position (especially since it’s not open), being ranked as the 32nd best coffee shop in the whole world. The list also included coffee shops from all over the world. The top 10 alone included the likes of Australian, American, Austrian, Singaporean, and French coffee shops, among others.
Only one other coffee shop from the UK made it into the rankings. Birmingham’s Yorks Café slid onto the list in 75th place. And that might not sound that impressive, but, given this is a ranking of the best coffee shops in the whole world, any position in the top 100 is well worth celebrating. Oh, and at least it’s open!
Image: @yorkscafe, via IG
Choosing the top 100
To put together the ranking of the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops, the team behind the ranking started with a list of nominated spots. These were selected by industry professionals and by the general public. Each spot was then assessed according to “a comprehensive set of criteria to ensure a thorough and fair assessment”. They looked at everything from Quality of Coffee (obviously) to Barista Expertise, Ambience and Atmosphere, Sustainability Practices, and more.
An expert panel scored each coffee shop according to the criteria, after which there was a public vote. Scores were then assigned to each coffee shop, with the public vote accounting for 30% of the score and the expert’s opinions for 70%. The scores then determined the top 100.
We reckon ‘is it open?’ could have been a helpful criteria for the list – but we’ll try not to get too bogged down in such technical questions.
The world’s best coffee shops
If you live locally to one of these coffee shops, then you can enjoy a perfectly executed coffee at one of the top coffee shops in the whole world:
- Toby’s Estate Coffee Roasters, Australia
- Onyx Coffee LAB, USA
- Gota Coffee Experts, Austria
- Proud Mary Coffee, Australia
- Tim Wendelboe, Norway
- Apartment Coffee, Singapore
- Kawa, France
- Coffee Anthology, Australia
- Story of Ono, Malaysia
- Tropicalia Coffee, Colombia
You can read the full list of the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops here.