London's best coffee shops, from Prufrock to Bar Italia

We’ve come a long way since the sixth century, when coffee is thought to have been discovered. It was then that an Ethiopian goat herder began to play with the berries his flock were chewing on after noticing an uptake in their playful behaviour.

So goes the story, at least — and whether verifiable or not, it is a good one. By the 17th century, coffee and coffee houses had spread across much of the Middle East and Europe. Then came 1971 and the founding of Starbucks. A bean company until the Eighties, the company began to open coffee shops sometime in the middle of the decade, which took off as rapidly as a gunshot. By 1998, their expansion included the UK and so began a revival of coffee houses here; high streets began to change.

Have things gone too far? London is now home to Shot, a Mayfair and Marylebone coffee house with a £265 espresso on the menu, which makes it . What do you get for your money? Bragging rights, largely. The beans are from Japan, which is a rarity as the country’s climate isn’t particularly conducive to growing beans,