If you’re in France, do you start your day with a café au lait and follow your dinner with a shot of black espresso. In Istanbul, would you seek out Starbucks or savor the thick, tarry Turkish brew? If you’re the type of traveler who likes to go native, and you like to fuel your journeys with Joe, you’ll do well to grab a fresh hot copy of Lonely Planet’s Global Coffee Tour ($19.99. www.lonelyplanet.com). Featuring a carefully curated guide to coffee shops and roasteries around the world, it’s a caf-fiend’s combination of atlas and almanac, loaded with cawfee tawk and java trivia. And it’s for serious beanie babies: While you’ll discover your own preferences among the best of the best, all of the featured vendors serve coffee that’s scored a minimum 80 points of 100 according to the Specialty Coffee Association of America.“Time is the enemy of coffee,” write the editors, “you can buy specialty coffee online easily enough, but you are never going to get the same result as having it prepared for you by expert hands close to where it was roasted.” The book features brief overviews of the coffee scene in 37 countries, identifies the best cafes, roasteries, and plantations by city, and points out nearby attractions to help you justify a special visit to any decaffeinated fellow travelers.
In Hanoi, Vietnam try ca phe trung, or egg coffee: “part drink and part dessert, with a fluffy head of actual whipped egg along with condensed milk, cheese, and butter”; at Amsterdam’s Scandinavian Embassy café, the owners recommend intriguing pairings of coffee with bits of cured elk, moose, and bear meat. The book also includes opinionated lists of the Top Five Coffee Towns in different parts of the world—for the Americas, it’s Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Mexico City, and Vancouver.
