Best Cities to Drink Coffee

03.12.09 | 10:33 AM ET

Coffee culture means different things to different drinkers. For some, it’s a quiet café for working where wireless internet and strong brew are always on tap. For others, coffee culture implies something more communal and less electronic, with espresso or cappuccino the engine grease for conversation.

Either way, the java itself—be it of the Ethiopian, Colombian or Javanese variety—must be high quality and rendered with pride. Those precious places on the map where all good coffee things meet, any aficionado will tell you, are where magic is made.

Read on for a shortlist of some of the world’s best cities for sitting and sipping.

Vienna, Austria

Kaffeehauskultur in Vienna dates to the 17th century, when Turks seized the city. Today, enjoying kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake) in Vienna’s grand 19th-century cafes is a rite of passage for visitors and a ritual for locals, who usually do so with the company of a newspaper or friends. Just don’t order a mere “coffee.” Viennese coffee offerings are vast and include the Brauner (black coffee lightened to brown by adding milk), Einspanner (double espresso with whipped cream), Kaisermelange (large mocha sans milk, stirred instead with an egg yolk, honey and cognac or brandy), Melange (large cup of coffee with hot milk foam, similar to a cappuccino) and many more.

World Hum Tip: World Hum contributor Pam Mandel, who lived in Austria, says china espresso cups make a fitting souvenir for coffee fanatics. Shops along the Kaertnerstrasse, Vienna’s most elegant shopping boulevard, sell fancy chinaware. To piece together a more eclectic collection, she recommends hitting the Naschmarkt, Vienna’s legendary produce and flea market.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

At home in Holland, tea is the most popular beverage. But the Dutch are very social people and enjoy meeting with friends for a gezellig cup of coffee (the omnipresent Dutch term is untranslatable in English, but gezellig implies coziness in a social setting). Since apartments are typically quite small in Amsterdam, the city’s denizens love to gather in Amsterdam’s iconic bruin (brown) cafes—wood-paneled coffee houses of the non-marijuana variety where gezelligheid is guaranteed and strong cups of espresso-based drinks are often served with a morsel of something sweet. 

World Hum Tip: For an inexpensive souvenir, hit Albert Heijn, a Dutch supermarket chain found throughout the Netherlands, to pick up Douwe Egberts red label coffee. It’s Holland’s best-selling supermarket variety—dark, smooth and lekker (another favorite Dutch term, for “delicious.”)

Rome, Italy

Pasta feasts and papal patronages not withstanding, no ritual is more authentically Roman than visiting a bar for Italy’s best-loved flavor burst—a quick shot of espresso. Tourists lollygag at outdoor cafes with prime piazza views, but the real Roman coffee experience is a walk-through event in less obvious locales. Follow the lead of locals and stand at the bar (thus avoiding the service charge), order an espresso and down it in a sip or two before getting back to whatever the day’s business may be (and repeat the ritual as often as necessary throughout the day).

World Hum Tip: Curb your cappuccino cravings to before 10 a.m. Ordering the frothy drink any time later is sacrilege for Italians, who consider cappuccino solely a breakfast beverage.

Melbourne, Australia

Australia’s coffee capital owes much of its rich brewing tradition to an influx of Italian and Greek immigrants in the wake of World War II, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that Melbourne’s coffee culture really took off. Australians are fiercely independent when it comes to their java, and Melbourne’s residents even more so. Perhaps the best proof of Melbournian pride in the city’s independent coffee culture came in 2008, when Starbucks was forced to close 16 Melbourne outlets (and scores more throughout Australia) after failing to make robust enough inroads into Australia’s entrenched coffee culture. From an August 2008 article from The Age entitled American Coffee Culture Gets Roasted: “With its trademarked frappuccinos and smorgasbord of syrup flavours, the day Starbucks came to Lygon Street (Melbourne’s historically Italian main drag) was like Scientologists setting up in Vatican City. Sacrilegious.”

World Hum Tip: Brunswick Street in Fitzroy is Melbourne’s go-to destination for some of the city’s best coffee houses. The decor is straight from the ‘60s and the espressos straight from Italy at Mario’s (303 Brunswick St.), known for its all-day breakfast offerings. 

Wellington, New Zealand

No surprise that New Zealand’s arts and culture capital is also the most atmospheric city in the Land of the Long White Cloud for enjoying a classic Kiwi coffee drink such as a long black (New Zealand speak for a double shot of espresso over hot water). In the 1950s, there was a bonafide movement by immigrants and locals in Wellington to promote European-inspired coffee culture as an alternative to New Zealand’s rugby racing and beer leanings. Now windy Wellington boasts a roster of esteemed local roasters, including Havana Coffee Works, Mojo and Peoples Coffee. And Wellington is said to have more cafés per capita than New York City, so finding a good café, as they say in New Zealand, is “easy as.”

World Hum Tip: Like lattes, but fancy more oomph? Order a flat white, the classic Kiwi coffee that’s akin to an American latte, only with creamier milk (New Zealand has a proud dairy tradition) and a bit stronger. Always served in ceramic cups, flat whites are made with 1 part espresso to 2 parts steamed milk.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

With strong Spanish and Italian roots (more than 95 percent of Argentina’s population is of European descent), Porteños are rightfully proud of their coffee and café culture. And Argentina’s coffee culture is the most deep-seated in all of South America. From casual conversations to business discussions, all kinds of gatherings take place over cups of coffee—but never on the run. The concept of coffee to-go has found little acceptance in laid-back Buenos Aires, where coffee drinkers prefer to enjoy their café chicos and cortados in situ in cafes and restaurants. Starbucks didn’t open its first Argentinean store until May 2008 (the Seattle giant was long established elsewhere in Latin America, including Peru, Chile and Mexico), and the corporation is making a nod to local tradition by offering dulce de leche coffee and mate lattes.  Kudos for cultural sensitivity, but we’ll take an obscure San Telmo café any day over the formulaic American behemoth.

World Hum Tip: For something sinful on the side, don’t miss Argentina’s traditional sweets, alfajores—sandwich-like cookies layered with rich dulce de leche. They’re sold everywhere, from bakeries and coffee shops to grocery stores. The Argentinean café chain Havanna (with scores of locations in B.A.) is much-loved among locals and sells boxes of alfajores you can bring home.

Seattle, United States

With its oft-gray and drizzling ceiling beckoning residents indoors for shelter, Seattle is America’s undisputed birthplace of coffee culture. The city is synonymous with Starbucks, which was founded here in 1971 across from Pike Place Market. And the original location draws caffeine-jazzed pilgrims from faraway lands. But residents will tell you Seattle’s true coffee culture lies in the spirit of local roasters such as Espresso Vivace and Zoka, and in independent coffee houses in neighborhoods like Fremont and Ballard. In Seattle, the coffee options are endless, but single-estate coffees (with the beans purchased from individual farms) have become the buzzword for a populace that’s very picky when it comes to procuring the black gold.

World Hum Tip: Visit Lighthouse Coffee Roasters in Fremont for lattes that are the closest thing this coffee-addicted writer has seen to a flat white this side of the Pacific—the baristas even swirl a little flower into the drink’s silky crema. Perch on the narrow benches lining the front of the corner shop and read a newspaper or book and you’ll blend in perfectly with the Fremont locals.

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