My Biggest Frustration With Cafes? Inconsistent Coffee

One thing that frustrates me when reviewing cafes is inconsistency. I can visit a cafe, order a coffee, and leave thinking it deserves a spot on my list. Then I return a few weeks later, order the exact same drink, and wonder if I accidentally walked into a different establishment.

I’ve had coffee that tasted perfectly balanced on the first visit, only to come back and find it disappointingly diluted the second time. The flavour is weaker, the body is missing, and suddenly, the drink that impressed me before feels rather ordinary.

This is exactly why I believe revisits matter when ranking cafes.

One good cup doesn’t automatically make a cafe consistently good. Coffee can be affected by the beans, grind size, extraction, milk preparation, and the person making the drink. Some variation is understandable, but when the difference is obvious, it becomes difficult to recommend a place with confidence.

When I put a cafe on a best cafe list, I want to know that the experience I enjoyed wasn’t simply a lucky day. A revisit gives me another chance to assess the coffee and see whether the quality holds up. It also helps me separate a genuinely reliable cafe from one that only impressed me once.

Of course, one disappointing visit doesn’t necessarily mean a cafe deserves to be crossed off. Staff change, equipment needs adjusting, and mistakes happen. That’s why I prefer to look for patterns instead of making a judgement based on a single cup.

But consistency has to count for something. A cafe shouldn’t earn a strong ranking just because it served one excellent flat white on the day I happened to visit.

My goal isn’t to find cafes that can make great coffee once. It’s to find places that can do it well, repeatedly.

And if I’m going to recommend a cafe to someone else, I want to feel confident that they’ll get a good cup too. That’s the standard I believe a worthwhile ranking should meet.