Filed under
Food / Coffee / Best Of
Published
September 22, 2026
Best by Lauren may earn a commission when you shop through certain links. Every product here was bought with my own money or tested for at least six weeks. No brand has paid to be included, and nothing is ranked higher because it pays more.
I have kept a note of every genuinely good coffee for about three years, which is a slightly embarrassing document that now runs to thirty-one entries.
The winner was on a wooden terrace over rice fields at about seven in the morning, and I am aware that the setting did most of the work.
The winner, and why
A rice-field terrace, locally grown beans, and the first hour of the day before it got hot. Good coffee, extraordinary circumstances, and I have never been able to separate the two.
I have since bought the same beans and made them at home. It is a nice cup of coffee.
The honest ranking
Setting, then temperature, then the beans. That is the order in which the things that make a coffee memorable actually matter, and no one in the industry will agree with me.
A merely good coffee somewhere beautiful beats an excellent one at a counter, and this has been true every time I have tested it.
What to pack
A moka pot. No electricity, no filters, no paper, and it removes the worst coffee of any trip — the one in the hotel room at six in the morning before anything is open.
It has come to a rice-field guesthouse and a Bangkok apartment, and it is the only piece of kitchen equipment I travel with.
