We wrote about Prague’s coffee scene and the reasons why it’s so great last week (TL;DR version: specialty coffee now a standard, young people, barista a viable career here, and high standard of skill), but this week it’s time to list our favorite specialty coffee shops in Prague. Before we get to the list, a few details on how we choose the coffee shops and why maybe your favorite is not included. 

We write this blog as a service to the guests of our awesome Prague food tours, and these best-of’s are primarily targeting foreign visitors to Prague who may have just a few days here, so our key criterion here is consistency. If we drag you across the town for a cup of coffee, we better be damn sure they serve good coffee EVERY DAY. So if a coffee shop served us the best cup of coffee ever on one occasion, but a mediocre cup the next day, it may not have made the list. We don’t want to run the risk of our readers coming in on that mediocre day. 

As Jarda Tuček, one of the founders of Doubleshot Coffee Roasters told us, once you reach a certain level of quality in coffee, the rest is just preference or nuance. So all of the Prague coffee shops below should pass the basic bar: they use good beans freshly roasted by a high-quality, independently-owned roaster, ground just before brewing, by a barista that has been properly trained and uses properly maintained equipment. Even on that mediocre day, the places listed here will serve coffee that is drinkable, but the coffee shop may not make the must-go cut.   

How have we divided the coffee shops? Easy. We have roughly used and adapted the Michelin guide principle. The Must Go Coffee Shops are the three Michelin stars: worth a separate trip if you like coffee or coffee culture. The Other Favorite Coffee Shops are the two stars: worth a detour on your trip. And the coffee shops included in the neighborhood guides are the single stars: worth a stop if in the area or on the way. Easy, right? Enough talk, let’s do this.