The world atlas of coffee
World's Best Coffee Shops
Find speciality coffee shops
Discover exceptional cafés and the cities around them.
Top 100
Top 100 best coffee shops in the World
Discover standout cafés, from specialty coffee bars to destination roasteries. Explore the list and find your next stop.
Top travel spots
Best places to visit
France
- Paris142 cafés
- Lyon20 cafés
- Marseille17 cafés
Spain
- Barcelona129 cafés
- Madrid101 cafés
- Valencia56 cafés
USA
- New York107 cafés
- San Francisco87 cafés
- Boston51 cafés
Turkey
- Istanbul41 cafés
- Ankara15 cafés
- Izmir6 cafés
Italy
- Naples48 cafés
- Rome29 cafés
- Milan20 cafés
United Kingdom
- London195 cafés
- Edinburgh27 cafés
- Glasgow24 cafés
Germany
- Berlin115 cafés
- Hamburg42 cafés
- Munich41 cafés
Japan
- Kagoshima16 cafés
- Shibuya11 cafés
- Chuo City2 cafés
Greece
- Athens61 cafés
- Thessaloníki16 cafés
- Volos6 cafés
Austria
- Vienna63 cafés
- Graz23 cafés
- Salzburg9 cafés
Thailand
- Khwaeng Lumphini7 cafés
- Khwaeng Khlong Tan Nuea5 cafés
- Khwaeng Khlong Tan3 cafés
Portugal
- Lisbon80 cafés
- Porto26 cafés
- Cascais7 cafés
JOURNAL
The coffee journal
Stories, practical guides and fresh perspectives on coffee, from brewing at home to the cafés and people shaping coffee culture.
World Barista Championship: Panama 2026
The World Barista Championship lands in Panama City on 22 to 25 October 2026, the first edition in Latin America. Schedules, format, favorites and what to see.
Latest dispatches
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Caffeine's half life runs from three to seven hours, and genes, age, pregnancy and medication all move it. Why the same cup can feel completely different.
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GuidesCaffeine and Heart Health: The AHA View
The AHA's 2026 statement finds moderate plain coffee sits comfortably with a healthy heart, with the real warning aimed at high dose energy drinks and cafestol.
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GuidesDoes Coffee Make You Gain Weight?
A Finnish cohort of 2,264 people found heavier coffee drinkers carried less body fat and more muscle, with a distinct hormone profile. What it does not prove.
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GuidesMy Coffee Awards 2026: Barcelona Guide
Barcelona's My Coffee Awards runs 6 to 8 November 2026 at Nau Bostik: a festival and awards hybrid with free coffee, a barista contest and 50,000 cups served.
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GuidesCoffee Shop Simulators: Real or Fantasy?
Coffee shop simulators let you run a café with no rent, no staff and no bad suppliers. What they get right about coffee culture, and what they leave out.
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GuidesBrewing Coffee Without Gravity
Gravity does the work in every Earth bound brew. Remove it and water, vapor and aroma all behave differently, which is what made espresso in orbit so hard.
Read articleBREWING
The Brewing Atlas
Explore 31 coffee drinks and brewing traditions, from Italian espresso to Vietnamese iced coffee.
01
MexicoCafé de Olla
Café de Olla is a Mexican spiced coffee brewed in an earthenware clay pot (*olla de barro*). The preparation combines medium-to-dark roast ground coffee with water, *piloncillo* (unrefined cane sugar shaped into a cone), cinnamon sticks, and optionally cloves or star anise. The coffee and spices are simmered together — not filtered immediately — allowing the aromatic compounds and sugar to fully integrate. The result is a warm, moderately sweet, spiced coffee with an earthen note contributed by the clay vessel. It is most strongly associated with rural and traditional Mexican domestic culture, though it is served in restaurants and cafés across the country, particularly for breakfast.
02Torino, ItalyEspresso
Espresso is a concentrated coffee beverage produced by forcing hot water at roughly 9 bar of pressure through a compact bed of finely ground coffee. The result — 25–30 ml of liquid — carries a thin layer of reddish-brown crema, a colloidal emulsion of oils, gases, and proteins that defines a well-extracted shot. Originating in early-twentieth-century Turin, espresso became the technical foundation on which most modern café culture is built. It is consumed alone, sweetened, or used as the base for [[Cappuccino]], [[Cortado]], [[Macchiato]], and dozens of other preparations worldwide.
03ItalyRistretto
Ristretto is an ultra-short [[Espresso]] extraction: the same dose of finely ground coffee but only half the water — approximately 15–20 ml output rather than the standard 25–30 ml. *Ristretto* is Italian for "restricted," and the restriction applies to both volume and extraction time. Because early extraction pulls the sweetest, most soluble compounds first, a ristretto is sweeter and less bitter than a standard espresso despite being more concentrated. It is the base shot of choice in many [[Flat White]] preparations and in the most stringent Italian espresso bars.
04Irish coffee
Irish coffee is a warm cocktail combining strong hot coffee, Irish whiskey, brown sugar, and a layer of lightly whipped cream poured over the back of a spoon to float on the surface. It was created in 1943 by chef Joe Sheridan at Foynes airbase on Ireland's west coast — a flying boat terminal where transatlantic passengers regularly arrived cold and exhausted. Sheridan added whiskey to coffee for a group of American passengers who had turned back due to poor weather and asked if they were drinking Brazilian coffee. His answer — "No, that's Irish coffee" — became the drink's name. The preparation technique is as precise as any espresso method: the cream must float, not sink, and the coffee must be drunk through it.
05Turkish coffee (Türk Kahvesi)
Turkish coffee is one of the oldest documented coffee preparation methods in the world. Finely ground coffee — ground to a powder far finer than any espresso grind — is combined with cold water and sugar in a small copper or brass pot called a *cezve* (or *ibrik*) and brought slowly to a foam. The grounds are never filtered: they settle in the cup during the several minutes of resting time that precede drinking. Turkish coffee was the dominant preparation across the Ottoman Empire and its successor states for centuries, and it remains the everyday coffee of Turkey, Bosnia, Greece, and much of the Arab world. UNESCO inscribed Turkish coffee culture on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013.
06Torino, ItalyCappuccino
Cappuccino is an [[Espresso]]-based beverage composed of equal parts espresso, steamed milk, and milk foam — the canonical Italian ratio produces roughly 150–180 ml in a pre-warmed ceramic cup. Originating in post-war Italian café culture, its name derives from the Capuchin friars, whose brown habits approximate the colour of the finished drink. A properly prepared cappuccino requires microfoam texture: uniformly small bubbles integrated throughout the milk rather than a thick layer floating on top. It is among the most studied and argued-over preparations in specialty coffee.
07Café Cubano
Café Cubano is a sweetened espresso shot native to Cuba, distinguished by a technique that produces a dense, caramelised foam called *espumita* or *espuma*. A small amount of raw cane sugar is placed in a cup before extraction; the first drops of espresso fall onto the sugar and are vigorously stirred to create the foam before the remainder of the shot is poured over. The result is a small (25–30 ml), intensely sweet, thick-bodied shot served in a small plastic or ceramic cup. It is the coffee of Cuban domestic culture and the Cuban diaspora in Miami and New Jersey, where it is ordered through ventanillas (walk-up windows) as a daily social ritual.
Explore coffee
Browse all 31 coffee pages by name, country, or tradition.
REFERENCE GUIDES
Understand your coffee
Learn about coffee beans, grinding, roasting, brewing and the choices that shape the taste in your cup.