The Lantana Cup of Excellence

Before I opened Lantana I spent many months researching coffee suppliers; meeting with different roasters, sampling their various single origin coffees and blends, and testing how they tasted in different types of drinks. The challenge was to find a coffee that tasted as good as an espresso as it did in a milky drink like a latte so that I could satisfy as many customers as possible. The challenge, with that much caffeine coursing through my blood stream, was to stop my brain exploding and stay focused enough to make rational decisions.

I went on field trips to warehouses and cafes across London and met the entire spectrum of coffee suppliers from artisan micro roasters to large scale distributors. But the company I found myself benchmarking all others against was the one I eventually chose as our supplier - Monmouth.

It wasn’t just the taste of the coffee that I loved, it was the whole ethos of the company and particularly, the company’s founder, Anita le Roy, that impressed me. Anita is one of the pioneers of the UK coffee industry who started roasting coffee in the basement of a small shop in Covent Garden in the seventies. She had a vision to provide ethically produced high quality coffee to the UK market and the stamina and determination to keep doing it for 30 years. After all this time she is still very hands on in the day to day running of the business and as committed as ever to the principles on which Monmouth was founded. She seems to have achieved the impossible by successfully growing and building a company while keeping it ‘small’.

Time will tell whether I have her stamina but I know I share her determination to continually improve the coffee we offer our customers. So after 18 months of using Monmouth’s Espresso blend, I wanted to see if we couldn’t tweak it slightly to create the perfect Lantana Espresso blend; one that tastes sweet and smooth when drunk as an espresso but with enough richness and body to retain a strong character when its made into a milk based coffee.

Under the guidance of Monmouth's coffee buyer, AJ Kinnell, we experimented with ratios of various single origin coffees and came up with a few different blends to compete in the Lantana Cup of Excellence*. As I couldn’t get the CoE's official international jurors (of which Anita is one) to judge the results, I called on Lantana's esteemed and opinionated baristas to form the judging panel.

Sean, Colleen and Brooke sample the blends

After much deliberation, the recipe for our Lantana Espresso blend (and label colour) was chosen; a blend of Ethiopian Cabey Yirgacheffe, Guatemalan Finca La Perla and Brazilian Fazenda Rainha.

We’ve been using our bespoke blend for about a month in the café and the feedback we’re getting from espresso and latte drinkers alike is positive so hopefully we’re on the path to creating the Lantana Cup of Excellence.

*Cup of Excellence are national competitions to find single-estate coffees that can be set aside from the commodity coffee market, where prices have been dropping due to over-production in some regions. The competition is run every year in nine coffee-producing countries from Colombia to El Salvador and Rwanda, and the winning coffee is chosen by a select group of national and international cuppers. The Cup of Excellence beans are considered the peak of coffee production and are sold to the highest bidder during an internet auction.

I have a dream

"Australian proprietress Shelagh Ryan is determined to make London a better place by serving quality, no-nonsense food and proper coffees to the people.”

Well its not world peace, but it’s something. This week Lantana was featured in Timeout as one of the best places in London for coffee, thanks, in part, to the ‘coffee super-couple’ of Monmouth coffee and our La Marzocco espresso machine.

But while ‘LaMouth’ receive most of the attention and the accolades, they would be nothing without their team of personal assistants, otherwise known as baristas: Rachel Mary, Geoff, and Kirbie (who is currently on tour).

The barista supercouple; RM and Geoff.

RM throwing some shapes on the coffee machine...and on the coffee.




I am honoured that Lantana has been recognised for its good deeds towards coffee; helping to make the world a safer place for coffee drinkers.

According to RM and Geoff, the top five crimes against coffee committed throughout the developed world are: screaming milk, syrups, bucket cups, mugachinos and towers of froth.

And crimes against baristas? RM cited a customer who ordered a half caf / half decaf semi skim cap with soy froth. Thankfully not a Lantana customer.

Geoff, RM and Kirbie, thankyou for ensuring that I never have to go far for a fantastic coffee.

More sightings of LaMouth

Coffee supercouple "LaMouth" (aka La Marzocco and Monmouth) have been spotted again in London.

Tucked down a side street behind Whole Foods in Kensington, Kensington Square Kitchen boasts the best coffee in London.

It's a big claim that they don’t quite deliver on as the quality of the coffee varies depending on who is driving La Marzocco.


But it is a very nice spot to sit, read the paper and have brunch.

Until recently, LaMouth was also seen hanging out at Milkbar: the latest venture by the flat white lads, located just around the corner in Bateman St.


It is less frenetic, a little more roomy and better ventilated than flat white with the same laid back feel and consistently brilliant coffee.


Best of all, it is a ten minute walk from the site so its where I now go to get my daily caffeine fix.

Yet just when the LaMouth twosome was looking cosy at Flatwhite and Milkbar, I hear that Monmouth has been dumped for a young, relatively unknown new comer on the coffee scene; Square Mile.

Is this the first sign of overexposure? Could LaMouth be headed for splitsville like Bennifer?

Or can they withstand the pressures of fame and prove the cynics wrong - a la Bradgelina...

We’ll have to wait and see whether they make an appearance at 13 Charlotte Place.

The hottest couple in town

Sexier than Brad and Angelina, better pedigree than Peaches and Pixie Geldof, and doing more good deeds for humanity than Madonna and Guy, La Marzocco and Monmouth could just be the next ‘it’ twosome.

It is a rare thing indeed to have a sublime coffee experience in London and every time it has happened to me, I find myself in the company of Monmouth coffee and a La Marzocco coffee machine. Luckily, no paparazzi have caught on and I've been able to enjoy my coffee in peace.

Here are some of this happy couple's hangouts.

Fernandez and Wells, voted by Time Out as Best Coffee Bar in 2007, is a deli/wine bar/cafe split over two sites located around the corner from each other in Soho on Lexington and Beak St. Both sites are small yet still manage to feel light and uncluttered due to the high ceilings and bare fit out. The clientele are predominantly advertising and media types flitting in and out. You can see that the staff, who are incredibly friendly and unflappable for such a busy and space limited operation, take pride in their offering which is simple but of exceptional quality.


flat white 17 Berwick Street, Soho, run by two young Kiwi guys, gets an incredible amount of publicity for what is essentially a cramped, airless hole in the wall. Many high profile Australian expats living in London are quoted saying that they get their fix for good coffee at flat white. I'd even heard about it before I'd moved to London. The reason is simple - consistently magnificent coffee. I welled up when I saw complimentary newspapers and big jugs of tap water- a little slice of Australian cafe culture in Soho.


Monmouth at Covent Garden is something of a coffee mecca as it is the source of all my good coffee experiences in London. Below a tiny retail shop on Monmouth Street lies Monmouth's headquarters where they've been roasting since the late 70s. I could wile away many hours sitting and watching the baristas perform like well oiled machines.


Their Borough Market store is big by comparison but seating is still limited and I usually end up having a take away or a quick standup coffee at one of the benches mounted onto the wall.



London Review of Books is a very simple cafe attached to a famous bookshop near the British Museum. I sought out this place because a friend told me the coffee was good. I then discovered that it is managed by one of the regulars that I'm friendly with at Tom's - a fellow Australian called Terri. I'm starting to find that London is a small town in many ways too.