2 Love Tea and Coffee House in Clapham Junction

Today is international coffee day and after really al dente penne, small dogs and Roald Dahl, there is more or less nothing in this world we appreciate so much as coffee.

To be specific – a thing on the subject of coffee it's important for one to always be – it is the oat milk flat white coffees which talented baristas at independent local cafés around Clapham grind, steam and pour to perfection that we appreciate above (more or less) all else on earth.

And so it is with all this caffeine in mind, on an international stage of celebration no less, that our Clapham Caffeine Chronicles shimmies down Battersea Rise to one of our until now fiercely guarded local secrets.

2 Love Tea and Coffee House, 87-89 St Johns Road

2 Love Tea and Coffee House, or not to Love Tea and Coffee House is not the question.

Determined with roving loyalty during her near decade of life as a local Clapham resident, this dedicated addict, your editor, posits 2 Love Tea & Coffee House is the best café in Clapham (stroke Battersea if we're being like that about Clapham Junction border control).

Many a time she would saunter past 2 Love Tea and Coffee House, heading firm with conviction and hope for that elusive free coffee towards Pret. The folly.

Nothing against a 99p filter from Pret and there's a time and place for people watching from its St John's Road window seats. But now we've been around this bean block – and scaled the five-a-day habit to a healthy, socially acceptable one – we know there are infinitely better places to buy literally any caffeinated drink containing milk. If you're in for two pennies, you're in for two pounds. Well three, realistically.*

Find 2 Love Tea and Coffee on St John's Road, at the crossroads with Northcote Road and Battersea Rise. It looks small, dark and the colour brown is appealing said no one ever. But then you enter.

It is obvious on entering that as the name suggests, there's also a tea theme to this café. Since the selection of tea is too huge to choose from, we've never been tempted to betray our large oat milk latte order.

Such firm purchasing resolve does not apply to the café's selection of cakes which, served in superbly large slices, are scrummy.

A favourite place for work-from-homers to decamp to, finding a seat can prove a scrum. Oddly, we don't care. There is something incredibly homely about nestling into a corner of 2 Love Tea and Coffee (everywhere, even the tables in the middle of the seating area, feels like a corner built to nestle in).

Perhaps that's down to the plethora of small stools that are neither comfy nor uncomfy. Perhaps it's the bench, wooden with quite ineffective cushioning similar to what children in seventeenth century England would have slept on, and those the lucky ones; it wraps around the whole seating area of the café, leaving you alone to re-word emails and ponder the climate crisis at your table for one, even while it sits you with everyone else in the café.

Perhaps it's as simple as there being a large, old piano fashioned into a table, with crayons and paper for children to colour in with.

Whatever it is, 2 Love Tea and Coffee feels a home from home. But better than home, because it serves really good coffee and cake.

Have a look at the 2 Love Tea & Coffee website if the urge is like, strong. It is very uninformative. Or to be more generous, it is forgetful. Forgetful, for example, of its second branch in Clapham (stroke Battersea if we're still being like that about Clapham Junction border control).

If you couldn't care less about its cosiness and could just really do with its coffee, this smaller, lighter 2 Love Tea and Coffee on Lavender Hill has equally tasty beans in the hands of equally talented baristas.

Wish them a happy international coffee day from us if you go.