Folks who visit Budapest typically seek out grand, Old World cafés—the ones with layered sponge cakes on display and gilded backdrops for their caffeine fixes. It reminds them of a bygone era, of the palatial buildings they glide by on their obligatory Danube River cruises. Dropping into the circa-1887 Centrál Kávéház for a restorative slice of walnut-vanilla Esterházy torta is indeed an ambient must-do when in the city, but it would behoove coffee aficionados to head to more modern cafés for their espresso breaks instead. Many an expert shot is pulled in Budapest, where the “third-wave” scene is robust and delightfully geeky.
During its 40 years of Communist rule, turning out, say, a well-wrought cappuccino was an unfathomable priority in Budapest. In recent years, though—especially over the last five—mediocre, mass-produced cups of joe have increasingly made way for top-notch ones that celebrate premium beans and impressive equipment made by skilled, passionate baristas who have a natural knack for hospitality. Joints like My Little Melbourne have led the charge of this shift. Opened in 2012 and inspired by the abundance of stellar Down Under-coffee, it’s a small space located on central Madách tér, with a buzzy terrace to enjoy flat whites and lemon tarts. Next door is their filter coffee-only shop, My Little Brew Bar, and found inside a Buda shipping container close to the river is #thisismelbournetoo. Tamp & Pull, with two locations—the tiny red and brick one is conveniently a six-minute walk to the Great Market Hall—is another 2012-era pioneer. It’s stocked with Has Bean coffee from the United Kingdom in offbeat roasts like Brazilian Yellow Bourbon.
One of the first to spread the gospel of quality coffee in Budapest is Tibor Várady, who oversaw the caffeinated concoctions at the boutique and silkscreen studio Printa from 2010 to 2012. Then, he opened Espresso Embassy, close to the campus of Central European University and St. Stephen’s Basilica. “Printa was great, but it was limited. I wanted to open Espresso Embassy to give the community something deeper, a more informative and fulfilling experience,” he says. It’s packed daily with students, professors, and tourists, and despite the high volume, staff members remain friendly as they crank out Japanese-style iced filter elixirs, and offer tastes of Ethiopian brews to curious customers waffling between pour-over options. Most patrons order their drinks with freshly baked goods like chocolate babka, and some walk away with bags of beans from local roaster, Casino Mocca. Housed in a building from the 1800s, it has a vaulted brick ceiling, and it’s a chill place to sit at the long communal table and listen to a playlist that spans The xx and Fleetwood Mac. Várady thinks the coffee phenomenon is global in nature, but “Budapest is part of the movement,” and it’s thrilling to him because of how long he and his fellow colleagues have been honing their craft.
Also part of the upper coffee echelon is Dose Espresso. Not far from Várady’s shop, it’s a quiet locale for an Acme & Co. cup of filtered Guatemalan from London’s Square Mile Coffee Roasters alongside a.m. muesli. Double Shot, on the tranquil Pozsonyi utca close to Margaret Island, is another. Here, the food accompanying locally roasted 42 Coffee is not a mere afterthought, revolving around the likes of juicy pulled pork sandwiches savored on the sunny sidewalk patio. The same street is home to Ébresztő, which started out about an hour away in Tata, northwest of the city. The space feels like a gallery, with guests sipping coffee from Ébresztő’s own roaster, Awaken Company, next to issues of the arty Cereal and Kinfolk magazines. Overall, it’s a vast coffee market, with shops flaunting different personalities. Bright teal-hued Tényleg, run by a couple in sleepy District IX, shows off fudgy Peruvian cortados and just-made Nutella-plum cakes while the soulful Jacob Banks plays in the background. It couldn’t be more different, for example, from the mini-chain Madal Cafe, which has now sprouted a vegan pasta bar for hungry macchiato fans at its latest outpost close to the stunning Hungarian Parliament Building.
“The coffee scene in Budapest is still very young if you think about it, but we know each other and we are a community, and I think that is important to growing even stronger,” says Gábor Mordy Jakab, who first unveiled his shop, WarmCup, inside a tapas restaurant. “I am someone who always experiments with coffee, and the people who come to WarmCup know this, but they also know that I am taking care of them.” Last year, he revealed a bigger place of his own adjacent to the movie theatre, Art + Cinema, a respite from the cluttered boulevard it’s located on with its white walls, wood, and greenery. Jakab uses Populus beans from Berlin, and carefully makes drinks for his guests, from cold drip coffee tonics with orange, to brews playfully served in decanters. “There are more than 30 specialty coffee shops in Budapest now, but you can pick out the best ones by how much they concentrate on quality. Do they know the farmers? Do they know the roasters? Do they know their machines well?” he points out.
For Péter Bajkó, who launched Kontakt in a relaxed alley in 2014, the emphasis on coffee is so strong that he doesn’t even mix it with Szimply, the all-day breakfast eatery he opened across the way last year. Instead, after their platters of grilled banana, vanilla mousse, and peanut butter washed down by cold-pressed juice, customers can pop over to Kontakt for a quenching cascara soda as a morning finale. “At Kontakt, we focus just on the coffee; at Szimply, we focus just on the food. Even though we think a lot together, I think it is important to keep them separate and do them both as well as possible,” says Bajkó. At the petite, sugar-shunning Kontakt, it is not unusual to overhear patrons and staff nerding out over nuances of cupping or nitro coffee. Like the café’s spare, Nordic-inspired décor, Kontakt’s beans are most often sourced from Scandinavia, including Swedish Koppi and Danish La Cabra. “Over the last few years, the city center became saturated with coffee shops—some selling really good coffee, others not so much. What we are starting to see now is that wonderful places are opening all across the city. It’s not just for tourists anymore, but locals.”
Consider Buda; beyond the Castle District’s nexus of landmarks, few travelers spend time here. But they should, because there are offbeat places to hang out with noble cups of coffee in tow. Kelet, with its book-lined walls and mushroom curry, has long been the neighborhood’s epicenter of pour-overs, but now there is also Bruberi Coffee & Bakery for Aeropress coffees and Asian-style chicken on a charming outdoor perch in ritzy Rózsadomb. There are espresso tonics at Kaffeine, close to the Mammut shopping mall on the quaint, pedestrian Lövőház utca, and on the upper level of the Batthyány tér market overlooking the Danube and Parliament, fresh-from-the oven croissants and cold brew from Steamhouse. Outlet shopping in further afield Budaörs? Unwind at Major, the newcomer from the owners behind Pest favorite Fekete, where the breakfasts and serene courtyard are as beloved as its brew bar.