“I’d like a table outside, please.”

I love coffee and I love great places to drink it. I think any city that wants to make a claim to greatness needs to have at least a couple of places where you can have a memorable cup.

Take Hong Kong, for example. It’s a polarizing city that evokes love and loathing in equal measure, often from the same people. But on the whole I think it is a great city because of two reasons. The first is the Pacific Coffee Company in Pacific Place. I went there the first time I was traveling alone. After a day of tramping through the city I was tired and bored. But the café was warm and friendly and their checkered red tablecloths were just what I needed to see on a rainy December evening. Sadly they have since been displaced by Starbucks.

The second reason is a coffee shop on Hong Kong peak. I still remember spending a winter evening on the terrace with friends eight years ago. We huddled against a stiff cold wind and admired the cityscape as we sipped from giant yellow mugs of steaming coffee and nibbled on mango cheesecake.

Talking of Pacific Coffee, one of my favorite places for coffee in Singapore is their café at the airport. They have the comfiest sofas and it’s just the perfect place to curl up with a thick book and a large latte. Who says flight delays are a bad thing?

Somehow Starbucks isn’t one of my favorite destinations in Singapore. But Manila is a different story altogether. I used to work in Manila for a while, in a building that is host to possibly the hippest Starbucks café anywhere. I’ve ended many a long lunch sitting on one of their sidewalk tables with a friend. We would nurse our iced black coffees and exchange commentary on an eclectic mixture of expatriates, truant school-kids, cigarette vendors and hipsters as we watched the world walk by.

Don’t mistake me – I don’t only patronize up-market franchise brands in prime locations. One of my all-time favorites is Sassi, a roadside shack in Delhi that I used to frequent from the time I was a student. I used to go there with friends on a lazy afternoon. We’d sit on the pavement (not at a pavement table, just on the pavement) and count the cars that whizzed past as we drank thick milky coffee with generous sprinklings of chocolate powder. Sassi, the eponymous shack-owner was also kind enough to give us credit, which didn’t hurt our loyalty to him at all. One of our occasional companions was the world’s happiest stray dog. He was well-fed on scraps from the food stalls, and he had found a depression in the ground that fit him perfectly. He would curl up in it and look at us lazily through one half-open eye and we would gaze back at him enviously. If we all had such lifestyles that would spell an end to all the war and strife in the world.

Interestingly, Sassi’s earthiness is of a piece with Delhi itself. And conversely Mumbai, which is altogether a more sophisticated city (but far less pretty) has a correspondingly sophisticated (and very pretty) coffee haven at the Prithvi theater. After watching a play you can relax at night among the trees in their open-air café. As you drink a perfectly blended Irish coffee from a tall, graceful curved glass, you can either choose to make conversation yourself, or else eavesdrop on your neighbors as they talk knowingly about anything under the sun.

If coffee shops reflect the spirit of the place they are in, probably none does so better than a small breakfast café in Boracay, in the Philippines. Boracay is a delightful island resort. It is small and charming, yet remarkably cosmopolitan; it has an utterly unexpected range of international restaurants. And along the beach, right next to the surfboard and jet-ski rental, is a kiosk run by two friendly American ladies. Every morning they serve enormous slices of freshly baked bread with honey, or jam, or butter. After you have wolfed down the food you can sit on a bench or a tree stump with your mug of coffee, and watch the crystal clear water lap against clean white sands.

As I look out the window at home and watch the rain drizzle down, as I let the smell of cappuccino drift up out of my mug, I raise a silent cheer to the two ladies on the beach, to all the other great cups of coffee I’ve enjoyed, and to all the wonderful cafés where I’ve enjoyed them.