What the...!?

Welcome, this blog will seek to document an adventure of discovery via coffee in one of my favourite London suburbs - Balham.

There will be some rules, although I'm not quite sure what they will be. In essence my ambition is to taste and critique at least one coffee from every establishment that serves coffee in Balham.

I will try and cover coffee shops first but will also include restaurants, pubs and bars.

I don't think I'll include outlets that only serve instant coffee (e.g. the kebab shop under the railway bridge).

That is not to say I'm a coffee snob, far from it. I do love an intense espresso but am perfectly happy to have an instant coffee. Don't let the fact that I'm doing a blog on coffee fool you in to thinking I'm pretentious about my coffee. I like going out for a coffee and cake but if the coffee is bad, I'll still drink it and be happy so long as the cake and service make up for the bad coffee. By the same token, a good coffee can make up for all manner of sins.

So hopefully the first review will be done this weekend, and then will try for weekly updates until I'm at the end of my odyssey.

I do hope you will join me for the journey and maybe contribute some reviews/thoughts of your own.

Bean Spiller.