Shockingly enough, it’s hard to get good coffee in Vienna. The purveyors are arranged by district. Please leave your comments, any disagreements, and recommendations. Reviews scale: 1 shot (will do nicely), 2 shots (a fine coffee), 3 shots (fine coffee plus good atmosphere or great coffee plus poor environment), 4 shots (great coffee, great atmosphere), 5 shots (the perfect place: cafe is perfect, coffee is beyond belief). Shots must be earned. The scores are not relative to Vienna. I am scoring these on a global basis. Therefore, for a place to earn 5 shots, it would have to be considered, in my opinion, among the finest cafes in the world. Note: please read the commentary attached to this page, as cafes are often changing their products, etc.
Districts:
1. |2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. | 7. | 8. | 9. | 10. | 11. | 12. | 13. | 14. | 15. | 16. | 17. | 18. | 19. | 20. | 21. | 22. | 23.
I. Innere Stadt
- Coffee TimeMultiple Locations : Michael Norris, Kiwi with a cause, writes: This establishment looked much more Starbucks-y than I would normally ever use; however, I was curious so I tried it out. The menu tried to pursuade me that their baristas train to make coffee for a year in South India (riiiiiight…that well known home of good coffee). Nevertheless, the melange I got was quite good, all things considered – not knock-your-socks-off good, but still one of the best I’ve had in Vienna so far. I could still feel it working its magic an hour later, so that says something. Maybe I’ll plan a trip to South India next… The editor adds: This is the best “to go” coffee in Vienna.
Rating: 3.5 shots - Cafe DiglasWollzeile 10, 1010 Wien, Tel +43-(0)1-5125765 site: Word has it that the coffee here blows more nasty chimps than Curious George on ecstacy in the primate lab at the CDC. Our correspondent writes:
To be precise, I had a “kleiner Schwarzer” (no milk) which tasted like bitter cardboard that had been dissolved in too much water. Unfortunately, I added sugar before tasting it, so it tasted like sweet bitter cardboard that had been dissolved in too much water. The worst thing about it was that I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for hours afterwards, no matter what I ate or drank.
Revolting. No shots.
- Julius MeinlAm Graben 19, 1010 Wien, Tel +43 (0)1 532 33 34 6300 site: I have a soft spot for Meinl. I just love the company’s semi-racist little logo and its super premium gourmet attitude. I know for sure that their beans can be okay and, especially for grocery store level, are often the better options on the shelf. The outdoor cafe, with its tightly packed-in, uncomfortable tables overcomes its utter unpleasant service and miserably cramped quarters with a view that features some of the most unfortunate victims of spendy trends in all of Vienna. That, in itself, is reason enough to hang out here. The coffee is often old by the time you get it, but I hold hope in my heart that it was, at one time, a better-than-average little drink. Score: One (charitable) Shot
II. Leopoldstadt
III. Landstrasse
IV. Wieden
V. Margareten
VI. Mariahilf
- Mocca Club Linke Wien Zeile 4, 1060 Wien, Tel: +43-(0)1-587 00 87 site: Not only does this cafe feel comfortable and look great, it also features some of the best coffee to be had in Vienna—if not the best. Featuring ultra premium espresso blends, more single origin and premium beans than one can count, and (usually) excellent barrista technique, this cafe’s products are far superior to even the finest Vienna has to offer. In addition to excellent coffee, Mocca Club serves unbelievably decadent hot chocolate that one must mix oneself, premium teas, coffee beans for home use, candies and simple snack foods. Meals are a miss, and brunch is only worth the money if you plan on lingering for a long time. Service is very good and friendly and the location, on Vienna’s famous Naschmarkt, makes it a great place for all Viennese and visitors to enjoy on occasion. English is widely spoken without attitude here, so it is foreigner friendly. Drink quality is a bit too variable, but you’ll rarely get something not worth the effort. Amenities: Comfortable, stylish Hawaiian cafe scene, excellent coffee, chocolates and teas, wifi. Score:
4 Shots.3 shots A Halfass Golden Crema Crown Pick! UPDATE: The Mocca Club is closed! Tragedy. UPDATE (AGAIN): Word is that Mocca Club is once again open! Victory. UPDATE (AGAIN): Mocca Club is suffering from ownership/management changes and quality issues. Use caution, as the place is in danger of losing its remaining shots.
VII. Neubau
- AudiamoKaiserstraße 70, 1070 site: A very mellow place selling audiobooks and whatnot on Vienna’s up-and-coming Kaiserstraße. The selection of audiobooks is quite good (in German) and the vibe is just so relentlessly mellow that I can’t help but feel chilled out here. Now, for the best part: they offer somewhat decent to go coffees in Portland-style white paper cups w/ affixed logo stickers. Great news for strolling shoppers heading of to the organic market or the nice new chocolate store.Score: 1 shot
- Cafe Wirr : Very average coffee for Vienna, which means pretty lousy. The brunch is a wonderful buffet and the vibe, atmosphere and staff here make it a fine place. Still, on occasion, you may get a decent coffee here.Score: 1 shot.
- Cafe & Galerie Kandinsky Lerchenfelderstr. 13/im Hof, Vienna, A-1070 Phone: +43 1 3153118 : This is a tiny cafe located in the courtyard of a building—so you have to really look for it. However, a trip into this courtyard is well worth your time. Near this cafe is a baker who mills his own flour and bakes fresh goods six days per week. The Cafe Kandinsky is comfortable and very friendly. The espresso drinks are of good quality although, as is typical in Vienna, the roasts have gone a bit stale in most cases. However, the blend compensates well and coffee drinks come out tasting quite delicious. In nice weather, the owner puts some tables out in the courtyard for a really great drink experience. The cafe environment would not be to everybody’s likink—it’s very small, cramped and haphazard. However, I find it very quaint. The owner is focused on quality and comfort—not volume and style—and it shows. Inconsistent output and poor milk performance have been reported, resulting in a 1/2 shot reduction in the score. Amenities: good cafe, art, no smoking! wifi. Score: 2.5 Shots.
- Kefa Fair+Mehr Neubagasse 55, 1070 Wien : This small “fair trade” shop has a tiny little espresso machine and the shop owner will crank out a “to go” coffee drink for you from his small selection of fairly traded beans. The shots were smooth and well-rounded and the milk was frothed to an acceptable level. Service was casual and friendly. Definitely the best “to go” option on Neubaugasse and I would definitely seek this place out before hitting Starbucks! Amenities: to go drinks, fair trade shop. Score: 2 Shots.
- Cafe Latte Neubaugasse 39, 1070 Wien t:01 / 5235509 : Our correspondent writes: Slightly better coffee. Foam was a little more consistent and less like soap suds than I’m used to. Coffee was still weak and stale, though, though ever so slightly better than Wirr. Score: 1.5 shots.
- Cafe Wirr Burggasse 70, 1070 Wien : Very average coffee for Vienna, which means pretty lousy. The brunch is a wonderful buffet and the vibe, atmosphere and staff here make it a fine place. | website | Score: 1 shot.
VIII. Josefstadt
- Alt Wien Coffee Josefstädterstraße : Review by Michael Norris: My expectations were high in that this seemed like a small, exclusively coffee-focused establishment, with young baristas. However, the melange I had was disappointing. The coffee was a bit bitter or burnt even, and froth was still too bubbly. Still I’ve had worse. Rating: Two shots
IX. Alsergrund
X. Favoriten
XI. Simmering
XII. Meidling
XIII. Hietzing
- Gloriette Schönbrunner Schlossstraße behind the palace, 1130 Wien , Tel: 879 13 11-239 : Despite the majestic (literally) room and stunning, regal view, this place pumps out bottom-of-the-ashtray level coffee that is only slightly more disappointing than it is nauseating. Grumpy service is an extra punch in the gut in case you haven’t thrown up yet. Score: no shots
21 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Sep 30, 2006 at 4:26 am
Thank you for your comments. I am not originally from Vienna but have lived here for about 9 years. I too was appalled at how bland coffee can be here. And forget “service”. Rude waiters in tuxes are part of the Viennese cafe “tradition”. I do agree that Mocca Club probably offers some of the best coffee in Vienna. You might also want to try Heissenberger coffees. http://www.heissenberger.com/. Cheers
2 Michael’s Remarks » Having breakfast in Vienna // Oct 24, 2006 at 3:04 am
[...] If you live in Vienna or you came here and erroneously expected this town to serve good coffee, you probably tried to have breakfast outside, too. For me, this became a habit especially when meeting friends, since I the chance to catch me in my free time in the morning is much higher than after noon. A lot of coffeehouses offer breakfast-service, but only the ones that did not serve old bread, frozen butter and really bad coffee are going to be mentioned here. In my listing I always took the breakfast named after the café, so at Dommayer, for example, I took the Dommayer-breakfast. The price for a breakfast is around seven Euro, the things that are included vary enormously. Café Griensteidl (1st district) Unbeatable atmosphere although the ratio of smokers to non-smokers is about 75:25. This can be disturbing if you cannot catch a seat at the end of the non-smokers since the ventilation sometimes does not protect you from the smoke. Although I really like this café, its breakfast is equal or even below normal. If you order a big one, you get a boiled egg, ham and cheese (actually both of not high quality), two different sort of jam, bread and “Semmeln” and coffee, tea or hot chocolate. In the morning I have never tried something else than coffee and the one they serve there, although it looks beautiful, is just terrible. [...]
3 3th » Blog Archive » Frühstücken in Wien. Ein Versuch. // Jun 27, 2007 at 12:56 pm
[...] Frühstück eher weniger. Das liegt vor allem am Kaffee, der getrost als “bottom-of-the-ashtray level coffee” bezeichnet werden kann. Daher Fazit: Einmal nett, um’s gesehen zu haben, dann aber [...]
4 Michael Norris // Aug 1, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I am a Kiwi living in Vienna temporarily for six months. I will be doing a coffee sampling of the local cafes, to see if I can find something that resembles a decent flat-white, and not a glass of hot milk that a coffee bean sneezed at. So far, nothing:
Cafe Wirr — Burggasse (7. Bezirk)
Very average coffee. Apparently the food is good, but I didn’t try. This is a shame, because the atmosphere was quite nice.
Score: one shot
Cafe Latté — Neubaugasse, I think (7. Bezirk)
Slightly better coffee. Foam was a little more consistent and less like soap suds than I’m used to. Coffee was still weak and stale, though, though ever so slightly better than Wirr.
Score: one and a half shots.
Gloriette:
I mostly agree with the poster above. Not the worst coffee I’ve had in Vienna (that was so truly awful that I’ve wiped the name of the cafe from my memory), but extremely ordinary, and the service was definitely in the typical “grumpy old man” fashion. sigh
Anyway, thanks for the Mocca Club tip. I will be trying it out as soon as possible!
5 Michael Norris // Aug 2, 2007 at 9:37 am
Important note about Mocca Club: don’t try to go in August. They are shut.
6 Michael Norris // Aug 10, 2007 at 9:03 am
Hmm, I’d have to slightly disagree with the rating of Café Kandinsky above. The ambience was nice, though not the most attentive of waitstaff, but the coffee was rather average. The foam was bubbly rather than velvety, and the coffee was pretty tasteless. Pretty standard Viennese fare. I’d go 2 or 2.5 shots.
Another two entries:
Alt Wien Coffee, Josefstädter Straße (behind the Rathaus): My expectations were high in that this seemed like a small, exclusively coffee-focused establishment, with young baristas. However, the melange I had was disappointing. The coffee was a bit bitter or burnt even, and froth was still too bubbly. Still I’ve had worse. Rating: Two shots
Coffee Day: Opposite the Albertina
This establishment looked much more Starbucks-y than I would normally ever use; however, I was curious so I tried it out. The menu tried to pursuade me that their baristas train to make coffee for a year in South India (riiiiiight…that well known home of good coffee). Nevertheless, the melange I got was quite good, all things considered – not knock-your-socks-off good, but still one of the best I’ve had in Vienna so far. I could still feel it working its magic an hour later, so that says something. Maybe I’ll plan a trip to South India next…
Rating: 3.5 shots
7 Michael Norris // Sep 15, 2007 at 4:11 am
Two more quick reports:
Cafe Europa: Zollergasse (Mariahilf)
Very ordinary coffee for such a trendy-looking place. Not disgusting, but just really tasteless. I had to search for the coffee in my melange. I mean, really… come on guys, get it together. Rating: 1.5 shots
Mocca Club: Naschmarkt
As described above, definitely the best cup of coffee in Vienna, unless someone can prove us wrong. There is still room for improvement though: the prices could be cheaper (€3.30 for a melange – yikes!), and there could be more consistency (my first melange was heavenly; when I came back a few days later, the melange I received was too hot and oddly weaker than the first).
8 scotty // Oct 26, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Had a Mocca Club visit that was less than satisfactory a couple weeks back.
1) I ordered a double ristretto. What arrived had been sitting for a while and was far from a doppio ristretto—more like a single espresso. It tasted relatively boring, too.
2) My friend got a house blend Americano. It was actually good.
3) My wife was looking for a good burst of caffeine, and likes Cappuccinos. She ordered one with 2 shots of espresso in it and the lady first acted super confused, then acted snooty about it, then basically said, ‘okay, whatever’, rolled her eyes and stomped off. The Cappuccino wasn’t very good. The coffee was largely unnoticeable other than its bad qualities, but the milk was pretty well-done. Maybe it’s because we ordered “off menu” on this one, but maybe not.
So I would say that the above comment is correct: we have a quality control issue on the drinks at Mocca Club.
Come one, Mocca Club! You can do better because you’re the BEST!
9 Michael Norris // Oct 26, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Yes, Mocca Club has quality control issues. The first two times, were OK, but not fantastic. Third time was incredible: a perfect melange with milk at the correct temperature and velvety finish, and a long-lasting taste. Fourth time was back to OK.
Also had another really good Melange at Coffee Day opposite the Albertina. But the curry is terrible there, as is the chai.
10 Michael // Oct 28, 2007 at 5:36 am
Forget Mocca Club. Since Joe is no longer there, things have dramatically changed. Last time I ordered an Espresso, there was no cream. I sent the coffee back. Then they brought the wrong coffee to me. And when I was there with a friend who had no idea of coffee at all, the dialogue between him and the waitress was a shame.
By the way, they will drastically reduce the different coffees into a handfull blends.
11 Michael Norris // Oct 28, 2007 at 6:43 am
So where would you suggest instead?
12 Michael // Oct 28, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Michael, that is way the best question to ask, but I am working on an answer for this. If you have any new ideas, comment here!
13 3th – Frühstücken und Brunchen in Wien // Oct 29, 2007 at 7:53 pm
[...] vernünftiges Frühstück eher weniger. Das liegt vor allem am Kaffee, der getrost als bottom-of-the-ashtray level coffee bezeichnet werden kann. Daher Fazit: Einmal nett, um’s gesehen zu haben, dann aber doch lieber [...]
14 3th – Über den Jänner in Wien, Tauben, Wolken und Kaffee // Oct 29, 2007 at 7:56 pm
[...] 1 Wer zum Thema Frühstücken in Wien Rat und Hilfe sucht, dem wird hier geholfen. Da geht’s auch um Kaffee, denn der ist ja das fachliche Feinkriterium für einen gelungen Start in den Tag. Außerdem gibt es noch bei Halfass, allerdings in Englisch, das Feature Good Coffee in Vienna! [...]
15 3th – Mocca Club geschlossen // Oct 29, 2007 at 8:28 pm
[...] es irgendwo in Wien guten Kaffee gab, dann im Mocca Club an der Linken Wienzeile Nr. 4. Dort konnte man sich immer in Bezug auf [...]
16 Mocca Club reloaded (3th) // Nov 8, 2007 at 4:51 am
[...] gefülltes oder gar, wie heute, ein nahezu volles. Irgendwas stimmt hier nicht. Und das sehen und sahen andere Besucher auch [...]
17 Heissenberger karl // Nov 25, 2007 at 6:06 am
.....wenn Ihr in Wien wirklich guten Kaffee, trinken- oder für zu Hause-sucht, dann schaut mal bei´m HEISSENBERGER am Kohlmarkt 11 vorbei. Gegen Abgabe dieses Mails gibt es eine Tasse Kaffee – Espresso oder Cappuccino – zubereitet mit unserer Top Espresso-Mischung Puccini ( geröstet und gemischt nach Mailänder Art )
Herzliche Grüße,
Euer,
Karl Heissenberger,
Coffeetaster & Kaffeeröster
18 Michael // Nov 25, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Ich nehme die “Werbung” an und erscheine wohl gleich morgen am Kohlmarkt 11. Hoffentlich kommt endlich ein wenig Leben in diese kaffeefade Stadt!
19 Michael // Nov 27, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Today I was at Heissenberger at Kohlmarkt 11 and had my free Puccini. Expect the “review” to be online in the next days…
20 Frühstücken in Wien ‹ 3th // Jan 26, 2008 at 5:34 pm
[...] eine Touristenfalle mit gesalzenen Preisen für ein mittelmäßiges Buffet und „bottom-of-the-ashtray level coffee“. Wer ein Brunch in schönem Ambiente haben will, der kann ja hingehen, wem es aber auf [...]
21 scotty // May 12, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Just added review of Cafe Rochus on the Coffee Page. Expect more!
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