Coffee.. a daily ritual, and one of our favourite ways to explore a new city! During our many adventures in Europe, we fell in love with exploring the coffee culture, heading across cities and often out into the suburbs in search of the best brews around! Coming from Melbourne, we are self-confessed ‘coffee snobs’. We love a top quality cuppa and dislike the poorer quality offerings. During our recent travels to Europe we were particularly impressed by the standard that many cafe’s would produce, with this an improvement from our previous travels a few years prior. We have detailed, based upon our experiences, the ‘top coffee culture cities in Europe‘! We would love to hear your thoughts, particularly any you think we have missed as we can add them to our list next time!
Best Coffee Cities in Europe?
Top Pick: Amsterdam
Amsterdam, the canal laden city bursting with museums, photo opportunities, culture, vibrant nightlife, and.. an incredible coffee scene! We rated Amsterdam one of the best coffee culture cities in Europe both for the quality, and multitude of top quality cafe’s around. Boasting amazing cafe’s like Black Gold, Stooker, Koffie Academy and more, there’s so many great places to get your caffeine fix.
Close Second: Copenhagen
Copenhagen was unlucky to be second on our list, as it was another city boasting top shelf coffee’s! However, don’t expect these amazing cups of coffee to be cheap. Copenhagen was very expensive, but we found the price justified in many locations. Copenhagen boasted our favourite cup of coffee in Europe, Prolog! Don’t miss Prolog, Coffee Collective, Roast Coffee and more!
More incredible coffee culture cities:
- Edinburgh: One of our favourite big cities in Europe, and with some of the best cafes around! Don’t miss locations like The Milkman, Hideout Cafe, Fortitude Cafe and more!
- Prague: What a great city! The old architecture and history in Prague is incredible, and the cafe scene is also excellent! We particularly loved Kafemat and EMA Espresso Bar.
- Paris: Whilst Paris wasn’t our favourite big city in Europe, it has amazing croissants, and great coffee (if you search for it!). Particularly, we loved Fringe and Shakespeare and Co. See more coffee’s in Paris here.
- Rome: Rome had some excellent cafe’s however, be prepared to travel for them! The best cafe’s were outside of the touristy heart of the city. Particularly, Marigold Roma and Faro were as good as anywhere around, but it is an effort to get there!
- Budapest: An amazing foodie city boasting excellent coffee culture! We loved the Melbourne inspired ‘My Little Melbourne’ and locations like Dorado, Circuz and Aran Bakery all delivered excellent cups of coffee!
- Bucharest: A hugely underrated cafe scene that was one of the best in Europe! Locations like Artichoke, Origio, M60 and more all delivered amazing coffee!
- Brasov: We were truly surprized at the cafe scene in this small Transylvanian town. Offering amazing coffee, top spots like CH9, Tipografia, Meron and Nola are worth visiting!
- Istanbul: Don’t expect good coffee on the ‘European side’, however the Karakoy and Galata areas are filled with a multitude of excellent cafe’s! Particularly, Karabatak Karakoy and Old Java Coffee Roasters.
- London: A great coffee culture city, but not as cheap as some. In most neighbourhoods we could find a specialty coffee shop, and offerings from Happy Bones, Cable Co, Flat White Soho, Grander & Co and more were all exccelent!
- Cambridge: Trust a university town to have good coffee, and Cambridge didn’t disappoint! There were so many great cafe’s, including The Bould Brothers, The Locker, Old Bicycle Shop, Garden Kitchen and more!
There were many other cities with great coffee shops, but didn’t possess the ‘city-wide’ coffee culture in our opinion. See our top coffee shops for all the cities we visited below!
Check out our guide to the best coffee’s in Europe below!
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WANT TO SEE MORE food recommendations & TRAVEL MEMORIES?
See our detailed travel guide of Europe travel based upon our experiences!
Check out further highlights from our time in the Europe! Take a look!
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