One of my biggest priorities when I travel somewhere, is to find great breakfast places and ideally, ones that also serve specialty coffee. You’d be surprised to learn how hard it still is to find decent options in Amsterdam that do just that. Either they only have pastries or only serve coffee. But sometimes, you know, you want a full on serving of eggs, toast and then some, and I am definitely the kind of morning person who will go far for a great start to my day.

When I was in Athens recently, I stayed at a lovely Airbnb near the city center and on the first morning there, I decided to visit a coffee roaster whose flagship café is quite a way out in New Psychiko. In the end, it was just a 20 minute metro ride away but as you exit the station and pass some major Greek government ministries, you instantly feel a world a way from the touristy crowds around Monastiraki and the Acropolis. In fact,  as you arrive at Kudu Coffee Roasters, you might be forgiven for thinking that you accidentally found yourself in a Sydney or Miami suburb.

There is a big covered terrace overlooking the main street and a busy counter inside that was catering to a long queue of takeaway orders. I grabbed a seat at a table and the friendly waiter told me that breakfast was not served until 9:30 but that I could start with a coffee and a pastry. I mean, I was on holiday after all. Who’s counting calories when everything looks so delicious?

Kudu has been around for about ten years and with its colourful packaging and diverse range of coffees it definitely stands out. Co-founded by Nikolaos Ferras, the company aims to source top notch specialty coffees from trusted producers and roast them to bring out all the gorgeous floral and fruity notes. I started my day with a flat white and a rich cinnamon roll that was dripping with locally sourced honey.

As I sat there day dreaming, I was approached by a couple sitting at the table next door who turned out to be Andrew and Irene Connole, owners of famed Sydney-based sourdough bakery Sonoma. Andrew and Irene were spending some time in the city with their three kids before planning to move to London to set up a UK branch of their hugely successful company. This is what I came here for. Great coffee, great food and great connections.

Once the clock had passed the 9:30 mark, I followed my first course with a helping of eggs Benedict and a cup of a handbrewed natural Geisha from Colombia’s Finca La Imaculada. The eggs were a bit too runny for my taste and the Holondaise could have been a bit thicker but the coffee was outstanding and served in beautiful ceramics.

The fact that there was such a huge outdoor area and a relatively little indoor area showed that life in Athens happens mostly out in the open. I love having my breakfast al fresco and soaking up the morning sun as I get my day off to a flying start. This visit to Kudu was absolutely worth the detour and if I had more time during this visit, I would have returned.

A few months ago, I heard a rumour that two pretty well-known characters from the local specialty coffee world in Amsterdam was looking to open a new place. And that they were going to serve coffee from our friends at Rush Rush in Antwerp no less. I always get giddy when I hear of a cool new multi-roaster concept opening its doors somewhere because most established places in Amsterdam only serve their own roasted coffee. There are simply too few multi-roaster cafés in this city!

Via via, I then found out where this new place was going to open and ever since I got this piece of intel, I had been keeping a close eye on that particuar corner shop in Amsterdam Oud West, waiting for it to open its doors and reveal itself. This week, it finally happened.

Earlier today, escaping the nasty summer drizzle, I got a chance to pop into Skina, the long-awaited new shop owned by Michael Danner and Lizzy Hassell. You might know Mike and Lizzy from their previous stints at the likes of Toki, Loof and Quartier Putain and it might thus not come as a huge surprise that only a few days into being open, Skina was already packed with people. After years of discussing their ideal design and set up, Michael and Lizzy were approached by their close friends Kassimou, Medi and Nadir (Rue la Bastille) to collaborate and as a group of five, and they were able to realize that dream: a space for community.

Skina, the Papamiento word for corner, is a homage to Lizzy’s Carribbean heritage. While admiring the huge bar with a beautiful top by The Good Plastic Company, Michael told me that they had picked the name long before they found this space and lo and behold, it fits. Skina is a lovely corner café.

The main space as you enter has huge ceilings that will soon sport a custom made lamp and a large piece by Brian Elstak on the wall. The floor is covered in funky linoleum and there are plants dotted around the space. As you descend the short flight of stairs, you approach a long bar that offers plenty of seating along its left half where Michael and Lizzy hand brew filter coffee and tea, and the two group Spirit espresso machine by Kees van der Westen and the pastry display on the right.

There was a wonderful liveliness to the place that spoke of the sense of novelty that customers felt for being amongst the first to visit the new kid on the block but also, there was a sense of joy that everything had gone according to Michael and Lizzy’s wishes. “I could never have dreamed of this,” Lizzy admitted while surveying the buzzing café.

Skina joins a few other established places in Oud West including their immediate neighbours across the road, Ikaria, as well as Uncommon and Monks a bit further away. “We definitely don’t see everyone else as competition,” Michael admitted. “Everyone does something very unique and I think we can all complement each other in this part of town.”

Other than coffee, there are some tasty pastries from Loof and Grammes and freshly made sandwiches that come, for example, with a chicken salad made according to Lizzy’s dad’s recipe, and a vegan version with pumpkin.

I mentioned to Michael that my spies had initially told me he wanted to do something with coffee and wine but that Skina was quite a different concept. “Indeed, we did want to do that,” he said. “But our partners ended up changing their minds and ultimately, it didn’t really fit with our vision for this place. Maybe one day. For now, we really want to focus on art and create a neighbourhood meeting place.”

Don’t get me wrong. I might be biased that a great new shop has opened in my neighbourhood but there is always room for one more, especially when they’re doing something a bit different. I, for one, am glad that Skina is finally here!

My Google Maps pin told me that Foyer Espresso had to be there. I kept looking. Maybe I missed it? Maybe it was inside a major building and hiding in the foyer as the name suggested? But it was no use. The coffee bar that everyone had been talking about while in Athens was not there. Confused I searched their Instagram and realised what I should probably have known all along. They had recently moved and damn, it was not that easy to get there. It would have to wait.

The next day, I made it my mission to head out to Foyer Espresso, which had been hosting many of my friends from the coffee world and seemed like THE place to be in Athens. Since the last time that I was in the Greek capital, a lot of the places I had previously reviewed were gone. It was time to add some fresh blood to our list of personally visited cafés and as it turned out, Foyer was having quite the week.

It was only their fifth day at the new location in Kallimarmaro and to celebrate the World of Coffee taking place in Athens around those dates, the team organised Foyer Coffee Week that included a bunch of different events in collaboration with leading European roasters like Coffee Collective, Three Marks, DAK and MOK. As it so happened, when I arrived that morning, Jens Crabbé of MOK had just concluded his event and was still lingering around. Before I could say butterscotch, he grabbed a bag of a Guatemalan natural anaerobic Geisha that he had been presenting and brewed me a cup. I mean, no complaints there!

Foyer co-founder Giorgos Papantoniou was also about, making sure that other guests were properly attended to and that the space looked as immaculate as possible. While the space is not particularly big, there is little indoor seating for instance, there is a terrace out front and a large bar with plenty of retail shelves on either side to showcase the latest coffees that Foyer has on offer.

It is undoubtedly one of the leading multi-roaster cafés in the city and is highly regarded by the many roasters that supply it. And it’s immediately clear why. The quality of the coffee, not just my own MOK-brewed cup of Geisha, is outstanding and the team here is incredibly passionate. There is little distraction from coffee too. Only a handful of cakes and pastries are on offer. There is no food or kitchen.

On the grinders, they have various coffees on offer including the Red Clay blend from Koppi, a coffee from Manhattan and even the same Geisha from MOK that I was drinking on filter. Furthermore, they sell a lot of curated magazines and coffee literature such as the brand new Terroir book from Barista Hustle.

After downing the last drop of my coffee, I headed off into the city to grab some lunch and wander about before returning later that evening to attend a small gathering at Foyer that centered around Charles Nyström of Koppi and his music records. Many famous people were there too, including Tim Wendelboe and Klaus Thomsen, both former World Barista Champions.

As I stood there sipping on my sparkling water, I couldn’t help but notice that Foyer did a bloody amazing job at opening its new location just when the whole world of specialty coffee was in town. Congratulations!

I often get very enthusiastic messages from coffee roasters who are interested in working with The Coffeevine to share one of their coffees with the world. While I am always open to exploring the possibilities of a future collaboration, it’s not often that I get to personally meet the roaster in question shortly after their initial outreach.

But this was exactly what happened with the guys of Sacred Mill in Warsaw. During a recent trip to the Polish capital with my boyfriend Michal who is currently finishing a Masters in Psychology at a local university there, I decided to make a beeline to Sacred Mill’s brand spanking new roasting space in the Praga district right after Michal and I had a quick and tasty lunch at a local café.

Grishma Rastogi and Rafael Bava, the Indian couple behind the brand were sitting inside the cool space as I approached and instantly recognized me. The vibe I got was incredibly kind and friendly and it set the tone for the rest of my time at the roastery-cum-café that combines cool minimalism with splashes of colour to create a tasteful and modern interior.

The production area is separated from the café by a large glass wall that snakes its way around the middle and offers onlookers a perfect view of Rafael at work on his Giesen roaster. Grishma usually sits in the office next door where she takes care of operations and marketing.

What struck me the most about them was their curious and truly astonishing journey. Though both are Indian, Grishna was born and raised in Kenya and met Rafael when they were living in Glasgow. Neither of them had a coffee background before they discovered that this would one day be their future together but Grishma’s Kenyan background helped them get into green coffee trading.

Eventually, they ended up moving to Poland, which struck me as curious since Polish is notoriously difficult to learn and Poland is not exactly known as a paradise for expats of colour. Though they never encountered blatant racism, Rafael did share that while living in Gdansk for a while, older ladies would come up to him and touch his skin expecting the brown colour to rub off. In hindsight, they laugh about it but getting used to Polish culture was not easy. Having said that, they also said that Poland is a great place for starting a business for non-EU nationals. Who knew?

When they attended the Warsaw Coffee Festival one year, they met with Krzysztof Barabosz of Hard Beans, a local specialty coffee roaster who roasted coffee for them before Rafael had acquired the skills to do so on his own. He gained most of his skills during a tough period of working at Auden Coffee Roasters, a Norwegian owned roastery based in the city of Bydgoszcz.

Though not allowed to touch the roasting machine for the first year, Rafael eventually moved up in the ranks and roasted coffee for Audun Sørbotten for two years. Then, just before the pandemic started, Rafael and Grishma opened the doors to their first little café and immediately faced their first major crisis as coffee shop owners. While they emerged relatively unscathed, this episode was followed by another ill-fated attempt to take Sacred Mill to Madrid, which got stopped in its tracks due to some major changes to Madrid’s licencing laws introduced after the pandemic.

What became clear to them after all this was that they would be better off honing in on their skills in Warsaw and taking their own roasting to new levels under their own brand. Thus, on February 26th, the Sacred Mill roastery opened. The space is located on a quiet side street in the fast-changing Praga district that is, in parts, still very run down but quickly becoming the hippest place in the city. There are museums, great restaurants, excellent cafés and lots of new residential developments that have joined the more industrial core of the district and Sacred Mill also caters to the growing number of offices in the area. In fact, Michal’s university is just around the corner too.

As we sat there sipping on some coffee, Grishma and Rafael told me that they would love for Sacred Mill to turn into a lifestyle brand like Onyx, the iconic American roaster, one day. “We really admire what they achieved,” they said. Indeed, these days, specialty coffee is so much more than just coffee and who’s to say that Sacred Mill cannot become the Polish counterpart to Onyx?

Their approach to coffee can be described as ‘looking for brightness’ and their selection of coffees includes various origins, processing methods and price levels. One thing that I would suggest, however, is to find a better fresh milk supplier. I know there are people out there who say long life milk is better than fresh milk because you don’t taste as much of the cow but I’m not a fan. If milk-based drinks are not your thing, you can also easily opt for delicious cold or hot filter coffee or a refreshing espresso tonic. In Sacred Mill, Praga has gained a great new specialty coffee place!

When I landed in Paris the other day after a red-eye flight from Amsterdam, the first place I ventured to was Back in Black, the café owned by my friends from KB Coffee Roasters. Located on a quiet side street on the edge of the 11th Arrondisment, this industrial-chic space is home to a fully-fledged coffee shop and roastery that also serves breakfast and lunch dishes.

Remy Bompart of KB Coffee Roasters had invited me to pass by and ask head barista Anna to prepare me some delicious coffees. I wouldn’t say no to that now, would I?

After getting a table in the admittedly somewhat cramped spaces for individual guests, I jealously overlooked the rest of the venue where other punters were enjoying their food and coffee at larger tables. No matter. I was looking forward to a bit of food and my first coffee of the day.

I started my visit with a solid flat white that hit the right spot and then I proceeded to order the Portobello mushroom brioche as my breakfast dish. Truth be told, the food was dissapointing. The thick slice of brioche was topped with just a few slices of mushroom and the soft boiled egg on top was cold. It was really bland. You need to do better than this guys! Maybe I should have gone for someone else like the French toast or the scrambled eggs.

After I finished the dish somewhat begrudgingly, I sought out Anna who was working behind the huge bar and we spent a few minutes chatting about the cool taps on the wall. She offered to handbrew a cup of the lovely natural processed Costa Rica from Cañal and thankfully this coffee was really great. It made up for the underwhelming food.

At the back of the space, you can find the roastery, which lay dormant that day because half of the team was at the Paris Coffee Festival but Remy being the sweet guy that he is, left me a bag of goodies behind the bar, which I was going to enjoy after getting back to Amsterdam.

I think the space is really lovely and has a lot of potential. A few fixes here and there will elevate the experience a lot more because the staff were all wonderful and I am a big fan of KB Coffee in general.

At the recent Paris Café Festival, I guest brewed some coffee with my friends from KAWA, the Parisian roaster that has been pushing boundaries and winning fans in France and well beyond. I love guest brewing at these festivals because it always gives me a unique chance to collaborate with some roasting partners of ours and to chat with customers who are keen to try different coffees.

The day before my guest spots, I was just wandering around Le Marais and the unexpected and wonderful vintage market that had taken over the streets around Rue de Bretagne. The sun was shining, people looked happy and the city was showing itself from its best side. This was the Paris that I didn’t know before and was falling in love with. Luckily, unlike Carrie Bradshaw, my time there didn’t end with a slap.

When I got tired of inspecting vintage clothes and furniture, I found refuge at the KAWA boutique, which is conveniently located right by Square du Temple, a cute park with lots of restaurants and bars on either side. As the name suggests, this is not a café but a showroom. You can pick up all of KAWA’s outstanding coffees, stock up on filter papers or buy merch and you can also sit and drink coffee at the bar or take it away.

I had a natural Geisha from Panamanian producers Janson, a floral and delicate coffee with notes of hibiscus. The coffee was served in two different sized cups and I was advised to pour a bit in each and compare the aroma and flavour. The difference was startling. One was more aromatic while the other was a bit more sweeter.

The whole experience felt more similiar to visiting Substance Café, a place that I love and adore. Though coffee shops often have the most delicious pastries and other treats, sometimes even serving an all day menu, there are moments when you want a coffee shop to be just that, a shop.

As I sat there, I witnessed KAWA employees have real meaningful conversations with customers, advising them on which beans to choose for their Moccamaster or their Sage Espresso machine. Two people working behind the counter seemed to be perfectly enough though I cannot say what it might be like during other times of the day.

For those of you who are just looking to get delicious beans from a great Parisian roaster, this is a great place to check out.

On a gorgeous and glorious sunny Saturday, I was wandering around the 3rd Arrondisment, popping into little galleries, eating Vietnamese streetfood and doing some shopping when I accidentally stumbled upon Fringe. I had it on my list as a place I wanted to visit but lately, I prefer to just go to a certain starting point and then get lost in the streets rather than following a rigorous itinerary. Maybe it’s age?

Paris is such a beautiful place and on this particular trip, I fell in love with the city of love. Strangely, I never gave the French capital much thought before, prefering London and Berlin over Paris but the more I get to know the city, the more it is growing on me. On that day, in particular, Paris was a pure delight. As I stood there looking at Fringe from across the road, I noted how this café’s relaxed vibes were drawing me towards it.

On a bench outside the main window lay second hand books and inside, there was a small vintage fashion sale. I made a beeline straight to the bar and took a seat. Fringe owner Jeff Hargrove was nearby, showing the large photography prints that decorate the walls to some visitors while barista Romain Thuret was churning out coffee after coffee.

After a while, Romain and I got talking and immediately vibed. He shared with me that he owned a different specialty coffee shop, Roche, until 2022 but that he needed to take a brake from entrepreneurship. It all got a bit too much for him, he explained. Roche was the exclusive partner for April Coffee Roasters in Paris, serving and selling Patrick Rolf’s coffees. At Fringe, however, he likes to source coffees from different roasters like our dear friends from Frukt in Finland.

There is always a ‘Barista’s Choice’ menu that, at the time of my visit, featured a Bourbon Aji from Colombia roasted by Assembly in London. For the first time, I didn’t actually drink a coffee that day. I was already nearing dangerous caffeine levels and needed something soothing, thus I opted for an iced matcha latte.

By this point, Jeff had ventured outside and was sitting on a parked Lime Bike just taking in the scene. I headed out and introduced myself, and Jeff explained that he used to be a photographer, which explained the vintage cameras dotting the shelves. Fringe was one of the first specialty coffee shops in the city and continues to be a magnet for curious coffee entusiasts who are looking for interesting coffees from international roasters.

The pastries on offer are mouthwatering and the service is friendly. Back inside, I observed an eclectic crowd of customers coming and going, many of which had just been or were just about to start exploring the gigantic open air vintage market that had taken over the nearby streets.

After saying my goodbyes to Romain, Jeff and co, I did the same. Iced matcha in hand, Paris absorbed me back into its fabric and I again got lost in her arteries and veins.

The other day, I read an article in The Telegraph that proclaimed ‘Forget Barcelona, The Hague is Europe’s best beach city. I’m not gonna lie, I had to take a deep breath and marinate over that for a minute. Don’t get me wrong, The Hague has charme and is actually really quaint and beautiful but to state that its beach is better than Barcelona’s is a wild exaggeration. Having said that, on a h0t summer day, Dutch beaches have their use and if you ignore the brackish colour of the sea, the water is really refreshing.

Scheveningen, The Hague’s beach front is popular with my countryfolk, i.e. Germans, and known for its iconic Kurhaus Hotel and pier (more of an eyesore if you ask me) and to my surprise, it’s also home to some great specialty coffee bars. The other day, I finally ventured out there for the first time in years and stopped by to see my old friend Vinnie Zwaan who runs Tigershark Coffee.

I hadn’t announced myself prior to my visit but to my delight, Vinnie was there and immediately recognized me. We hadn’t seen each other in many years. After hugs and kisses were exchanged, Vinnie gave me a tour of the friendly and vibrant space he opened in 2018 after some stints working at different cafés in Amsterdam, including briefly working at my own short-lived filter coffee bar on Leidseplein.

Tigershark is a multiroaster café that works with various Dutch coffee roasters including Shokunin and Manhattan from Rotterdam and White Label Coffee from Amsterdam. The walls feature large murals and framed artworks by Vinnie’s old friend Ivo Janss who is also behind Friedhats’ branding and mascots. Turns out Vinnie, Ivo and Lex (Wenneker) used to work together at the now defunct Coffee Company Korte Poten, which was long hailed as the best CC in the country. Unfortunately, it was also the least profitable.

Vinnie’s warm persona and big smiles make everyone feel welcome. I actually, without wanting to sound sentimental, really missed the guy and as I sat there watching him interact with customers, including a slightly confused German gentleman who didn’t understand the question ‘oat milk or regular milk?’, I realised that this café really is like Vinnie’s living room. He later told me, he grew up around there and this familiarity with his surroundings and the people was glaringly obvious in a really positive way.

Vinnie’s girlfriend bakes wonderful cakes and pastries such as pear and cardamom crumbles and vegan banana bread, and if the sun is shining on The Netherlands, Tigershark also has a lovely terrace where you can come hang out after catching some waves in the North Sea. Yes, Tigershark is definitely as close you can get to a Californian surfer café on these shores.

After some point, my colleague Bart came and joined me for a coffee and a catch up. He lives near The Hague and works remotely. Whenever we can, we meet somewhere in The Netherlands and I try to introduce him to new specialty coffee places; a great excuse for me to hit the road more often and visit places I should have visited long ago. Anyway, as we sat there sipping on our coffees, Vinnie dropped some Tom Cruise books on our table and winked at me. “I’m a big fan of this guy”, he said. Typical for Vinnie to drop a bomb like. I just love that man.

A couple of weeks ago, my partner and I were just leaving the idyllic Ardennes region in southern Belgium when we decided that we were going to break up our return journey to Amsterdam into two parts. After several days of being without a good espresso based coffee, we were gagging for a creamy and sweet flat white, and since Antwerp was sort of on the way, I suggested we stop at the newly opened Caffènation Blue.

We parked the car nearby and approached the venue from the south, skipping the large terrace with its giant columns and entering through the side door. The interior is large but not overly huge. There are big windows facing the street along which you can also sit and sip your coffee, which is what we eventually did.

With high ceilings, the most modern coffee equipment and a mouth watering selection of pastries, this Caffènation outlet really hit the spot. If you don’t know Caffènation, you should at least be aware of its instrumental role in establishing Antwerp as the leading specialty coffee city in Belgium inspired people to get started in coffee way beyond the city’s borders. I remember some of the earliest specialty coffee shops in Amstedam carried Caffènation and many owners referenced Caffènation founder Rob Berghmans as an idol.

The latest outpost takes Caffènation further and adds a new sense of elegance to a brand that was traditionally associated with beards, racing bikes and a ‘fuck it’ attitude. The interior is retro chic with lots of warm tones, wood and great illumination. You’d think the place would be flooded by natural light but the large outdoor terrace is covered and features huge columns that interrupt the view.

One of the biggest highlights for me was the Batch Brew self tap system originally developed by Australian company Six Simple Machines and pioneered by the likes of Single O. It features two different coffees that you can tap yourself either into the large mugs nearby or into your take away cup. The café also has its own in-house patisserie where all of the delicious sweet treats are made.

I particularly loved the friendly and welcoming service, something I still often find lacking in Amsterdam. Sorry about it. The baristas were happy to explain all the different features of the café and show us around the beautifully designed interiors. At the back there is a large glass wall separating the café from a work space while on the first floor there is an internal balcony that offers great views of the café’s inside.

For a city that prides itself on its strong coffee culture and forward thinking attitude, this new addition is a great enrichment and an excellent step forward for an iconic specialty coffee brand that has done so much to advance specialty coffee in Antwerp and beyond.

During a recent visit to Paris, I was hoping to have great weather, to discover lots of great new cafés and make some new friends along the way. Paris my dear. You delivered. Despite various delays during my journey there thanks to ongoing strikes and disruptions, I managed to drop my bags off at my hotel early on Saturday morning and then proceeded to cycle around the city using the plentiful shared e-bikes. Honestly, they are so great, I wouldn’t want to travel around any city any other way except when it’s raining or cold, naturally.

One of the places that was high up on my itinerary was Motors Coffee, a funky multi-roaster café sort of halfway between Notre Dame and the Louvre. As I approached, I saw a large terrace with low seating and a queue that snuck out of the front door. ‘Oh shit’ I thought to myself, ‘there won’t be anywhere to sit’. Luckily it wasn’t that busy inside and I could grab a lovely seat right by the window to watch all the activity inside and outside.

Motors is well known for bringing in lots of intersting roasters from around the world, including many micro roasters that focus mainly on competition level coffees such as Rose from Zürich and Special Guests from the UK. The menu offers a regularly changing selection of filter coffees from various guest roasters including Sey, Manhattan, Coffee Collective and Sey to name but a few.

The interior gives you motorbike chique vibes with corrugated iron, exposed brick and slick coffee making equipment. Valerian Nicolas, the lovely barista, brewed me a cup of of the lovely Finca Morales Sidra from Sey to give me an extra boost of energy just before heading over to the Pinault Collection nearby.

As far as multiroaster goodness goes, Motors is pretty much one the best places in town. Their coffee is excellent, the vibes are solid and the location is perfect. If you’re not into filter coffees, their espresso based drinks and dirty chais are great too. In summer, definitely cool down with a refreshing cold brew.