Independent coffee & cake in London

London has the deepest independent coffee scene in these isles, and this hub covers all of it, from the City and the West End out to the east, north, south and west. A lot of the modern UK specialty scene took root in the east, where Climpson & Sons started as a Broadway Market stall in 2002, Nude began roasting off Brick Lane in 2008, and Ozone, Allpress and Dark Arts run working roasteries you can sit inside while the drums are still turning. The West End and centre hold long-standing names like Monmouth, Workshop and Kaffeine, and the scene runs right across the river too, with Monmouth roasting at its Bermondsey arches, Origin and Assembly pouring south of the Thames, and strong independents threaded through Peckham, Brixton, Deptford, Soho, Fitzrovia and beyond.

Cake and bakes are taken just as seriously as the coffee. E5 Bakehouse mills its own flour under a London Fields railway arch and roasts its own beans, Pophams built a following on its bacon and maple croissant, and Pavilion bakes the bread and pastries for its own cafes. Several of the best spots double as something else, whether that is a rooftop farm at Brunswick East or a pay-it-forward social enterprise at Second Shot. Every place listed below is independently owned, and where we can confirm the roaster, machine or grinder behind the bar we name it; where we cannot, we leave it blank rather than guess.