Of the roughly forty cafés in Canggu, thirty-five clear 4.5 and twenty-six clear 4.7. That isn't a ranking any more. It's just the local temperature. Every list of Canggu cafés asks you to sort by a number that has stopped distinguishing anything.
I live twenty minutes from here, and I've never once chosen a coffee this way.
What actually separates them
Volume, and the split is unusually clean. A dozen of the forty carry big review counts; the rest are quiet. The busy ones are busy for reasons that have little to do with the coffee: parking, wifi, a photogenic wall, being on the road everyone rides down. Some of them are also excellent. Several are not.
When every café on the street is rated 4.7, the number has stopped being a recommendation and become the weather.
How I'd choose instead
- Decide what the hour is for. Working, talking, or eating properly. Almost no café here does all three well, and the ones that claim to are the ones with the wall.
- Look at who's inside at ten on a Tuesday. Laptops means quiet and slow. No laptops means the coffee is the point.
- Roasters over cafés if you actually care about the cup. There are three near me worth the detour and none of them have the best rating.
This is a small thing to have an opinion about. It's also the kind of small thing that decides whether a morning is pleasant, which is the entire job.
What I'd do with this
If you're thinking about something like this, here is what I'd do with it — the part you'd feel immediately, and the part that takes a bit longer.
This week
- Send me your dates and the rough shape of it. You get an honest yes or no from me, usually the same day.
- I'd hold the two or three things that disappear first: the villa, the boat, the table worth having.
- I'd plan one day properly, so you can see how I work before you hand me the whole trip.
Over a season
- I'd build the journey around how you actually travel, rather than a template with your name on it.
- I'd be the only number you need while you're here, including for the thing that goes wrong at midnight.
- I'd keep a file of what worked, so your next trip starts further along than this one did.
I read every enquiry myself, and I answer it myself. Anggun