Last month I was in London again, partly because our daughter graduated from her masters in sustainable development – proud parents, praise God. Naturally, the graduation was one day but f course I took advantage of staying in freezing London for at least 6 days before heading back to Dubai to spend time with family and friends and drink good coffee of course. Brickwood Cafe, 21 Battersea Rise, Clapham I stopped in here for my first coffee of my trip to meet with my sister briefly as she was about to fly back to the States, so I ordered a corn bread benedict and a flat white. Brickwood still ..read more

Coffee geeks I can’t think of a wonderful way to start 2023 than attending a full-blown coffee event in my city, Dubai. This was the second edition of the World of Coffee (WOC) event in Dubai but there was no comparison to the 2022 edition, as the 2023 was on a much bigger scale.. perhaps about 6-7 times the size. Kudos to Khalid Mulla (president of SCA UAE) and the top brass of the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), whose president Yannis Apostolopoulos, attended too. However, it wasn’t just about the size of the venue but the buzz too, created by coffee geeks, like moi who crave learning, t ..read more

Coffee at Kaffein I had the opportunity to visit Vienna (where I lived for over 14 years) again late last year and was pleasantly surprised to witness a slight surge in specialty coffee offerings, so here’s a quick guide on my top 6 from December 2022 comprising of the new and the classic ones. Kaffein (newish) Stoss im Himmel Researching Instagram prior to my trip I came across this coffee shop that I had never heard off before, but I could easily be forgiven as they opened just before the 2020 pandemic. Cruising through their feed I was impressed as soon as I saw that they had modbars (geek ..read more

Credit FLTR magazine One of the great things about being in a coffee enthusiastic city like Dubai is that there’s always something happening from opening new coffee shops with fantastic architectural design coupled with meeting new people in the coffee business that want to share their passion with you. One such person was Vishnu of Al Saqr trading some I met over instagram in 2020 and in person when I moved to Dubai – credit to him for spotting me in a cafe way back in October 2020. Vishnu on the left with Naveed Fast forward to 2022 and Visnhu has managed to pursue one of his dreams within h ..read more

Hey what’s this One thing I love about Dubai is that it never fails to deliver on experiences. Now, I’m very aware that there’s a lot of media, some good and some suspect about Dubai but a city dating centuries with over 4.5m residents is a lot more diverse than the glitz and glam of what the media wants to portray. So, off we went to the Al Fahidi district in old Dubai and yes, there is such a thing – it’s the place where it all started -where old building were built to capture cool air, where abrar (water taxis) transported people across the creek to trade in spices, cloths, carpets, gold, p ..read more

Sometimes you get to enjoy a thing too much and forget to acknowledge it and for that I’m guilty of having never written a post about one of my fave coffee and food hangouts in Dubai, HEAL – breakfast, lunch and dinner + wellness space, located on al Manara Road in Jumeirah. In fact I went there today with my wife and then it suddenly dawned on me that I have never posted about them ….. sigh as my daughter would say. For me, as you know by now, anywhere that serves good coffee and food that you can enjoy is always a go-to-place for me as it ticks the main boxes for me when it comes to delight ..read more

You’re probably thinking “where the h**l is this?”. In short, Khorfakkan is a sleepy beach town in Sharjah (a UAE emirate, next to Dubai), but a stone throw away from Dibba in Fujairah (another UAE emirate). Address Beach Resort So, why was I here? We had a family staycation (a vacation that takes place in the same country that you live in) at a fantastic beach resort in Fujairah in late August. I’ve posted my coffee experience at the beach resort on instagram, which got almost 10,000 views but in summary, it still bothers me how hotels and restaurants spend so much time and training in sourc ..read more

Drinking Coffee in London Last month I had the pleasure of my palate and my inquisitiveness to visit London and naturally took the opportunity to visit as many cafes as I could, whilst visiting some tried and tested ones too in the process. Despite having scorching temperatures with the hottest day ever recorded in London at 40C, I wasn’t discouraged on drinking my coffee hot nevertheless. One proviso – I was in around the West End a lot, so most of these cafes are near Oxford Street. So here we go. Omotesando, 8 Newman Street, off Oxford Street (new) Famous in Japan and not with an outlet in ..read more

I just got back from London and bought a few coffee bags from some London coffee roasters and first up on the filter was for Caravan Coffee Roasters. I selected a natural from Guatemala from their filter selection because I always find naturals more intriguing and especially more so from Central America, as naturals are quite rare from this part of the coffee growing world. I brewed La Nueva Natural Guatemala on the Hario V60 as I have missed… yes, I had missed brewing coffee on a V60 for two weeks. Using a menu of 15.3 g freshly ground coffee on my Wilfa Grinder 94C on my fellow EKG kettle ..read more

Aha! In summary, the researchers analyzed demographic, lifestyle and dietary information collected from more than 170,000 people between the ages of 37 and 73 over a median follow-up period of 7 years. As mentioned on my website (see bio) , coffee has a lot of #antioxidants, which can prevent or delay cell damage, as confirmed by Dr Goldberg. In the article, Beth Czerwony, a registered dietitian at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Human Nutrition in Ohio, added that #antioxidants can help break down free radicals that cause damage to cells. She added that “Over time, a buildup of free radica ..read more