The 5 best places for a good cup of coffee in Budapest

This hip cafe offers high-quality coffee, made from Has Bean beans by award-winning baristas operating La Marzocco machines. The interior features bare brick walls and designer lamps made out of gas pipes. Popular among locals who come here to work on their MacBooks. Obviously they love what they are served.

This big cafe near the parliament building opened in 2017. Apart from great coffee, they strive to offer a peaceful retreat in the urban jungle. The name comes from the peace philosopher Sri Chinmoy (1931– 2007), whom the owners feel inspired by – ‘Madal’ was his nickname as a child. Light, wood-based furniture, pasta-based food at lunchtime.

‘We don’t like bad coffee, that’s why we opened’, says the inscription on the door. This tiny shop with an upstairs seating area opens at 7 in the morning. It’s also a good place for breakfast. A coffee shop with a very complex personality.

These tiny twin shops are the result of barista experience brought from Melbourne to Budapest. One shop offers machine-made coffee, the other one filter coffee. They also import and roast coffee beans and they train baristas. All in all: they are crusaders for better coffee in Budapest. Apart from coffee, they serve tea, juices, cakes and sandwiches.

This cafe was founded by a geography teacher and a sociologist, and calls itself ‘a quality-oriented coffee shop, a used book exchange point and an art gallery’. There are thousands of books and you can take whichever one you like if you replace it by another one you have brought from home. The interior is anti-industrial: clumsy and old-fashioned, a bit like the home of a bachelor academic.