Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l' enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l'amour (or in English, black as the devil, hot as hell, pure like an angel, sweet like love). Everything, according to Marshal Talleyrand, the perfect cup of coffee ought to be. I agree on every point. Four simple statements that express the beauty and drama of coffee; it's a theatre, an opera of a drink.

Coffee means a lot to me. Its one of those rare breeds that has a life above and beyond it's immediate context. Think about the pull, the power, of that innocent question: "coffee?" I've heard it in all manner of experiences and environments: workaday, seductive, distressed, contented, rowdy, quiet, the list is endless, the permutations infinite. There can't be that many questions that will virtually guarantee a response like "coffee ?" does.

It's July in damp, steaming, London, where the Sun pokes out from the clouds on a needs must basis, and you want something that's going to deliver each of Marshall Talleyrands four great Coffee truths. Follow me. There's only a handful of stations on the Caffeine cross. This is not in any order of precedence, no place I'm about to mention out merits it's peers. All are equal.

Station number one is the Armadillo cafe. A delightful cafe, just larger than a hole in the wall, deep in Notting Hill, run by a team of New Zealanders and French. Bohemian credentials cheek by jowl with an edgy, lively neighbourhood. Luxuriant coffee, made with verve, and served exquisitely, stimulating enough to bring the near dead back to life, but, and this is the great coffee paradox, not that potent, that you'll never sleep. Whoever it was who said this in Twin Peaks got it right, it is a damn fine cup of coffee. They have a website too: http://www.armadillocafe.co.uk/index.htm

There, in the Armadillo, I'm a cappuccino man; at the Exeter Street bakery, it's macchiato or death, because that thimble full of espresso frothed with a touch of warm milk is worth dying for. Simple as that. This really is a hole in the wall. Tiny place hidden away on a side street behind Kensington High Street. For the Cognoscenti. And they're always baking, baking, baking. Hot breathes of focciacia, panini, pizza slices, lifted out of the oven every other minute. http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/directory/1156/22279.php

Near my sometimes second home in Chiswick is the Caffe Delizia, run by an industrious, hard-working pair of Albanians, with the ability to summon up devilish coffee at the drop of a cafetiere. Many, many hours sat on their terrace idling with coffee after coffee. Don't ask, it's here: http://www.caffedelizia.com/

During the average week, I'll be in one of these, or either of the brace of Costa Coffee shops around the Blackfriar's Bridge / St Paul's Cathedral axis. Come over, say hello, we can have coffee.