The 10 best cafés in Beijing

Our top 10 of the best spots in Beijing to get your caffeine fix

Cafés are an indispensable part of life in Beijing. Be honest now – can you imagine making it through the week without these temples to the gods of steamed milk, roasted beans and scones?

Whether it's for that extra pick-me-up on the way to the office, a quiet spot for a meeting, or a comfortable chair to set up shop for the day, we are always on the look out for awesome new coffee houses. Here's our pick of the city's top ten.

Barista Coffee

The OG of the new-wave coffee scene in Beijing, this tiny hutong spot channels the chic café vibe to a T. As generic as that may be, Barista pulls off the exposed brick wall and industrial lighting look with a friendly vibe, avoiding any of the pretentiousness that often comes with Serious Coffee^TM. The drinks here aren't the cheapest but they're very good and come with a Lotus biscuit on the side. Try the soda iced americano (30RMB) for something different.

47 Wudaoying Hutong, Dongcheng district

Berry Beans Café

Hidden in the 'eight great hutongs' of Dashilan, this little gem is a real find. Housed in a former brothel, Berry Beans Café is now a modern and charming coffee house. They serve a good quality cup of coffee but also a bunch of other drinks, including home-brewed beers. You can sit in the modern, glass area inside and have a look at the designer clothes next door. But the best seats are in the courtyard or upstairs on the roof terrace. From here you have a view over the maze of hutongs, which used to be Beijing's red light district in the imperial era.

7 Zhujia Hutong, Xicheng district

Green Cow City Café

More than 12 years ago, husband-and-wife team Shan En and Lejen Chen started Green Cow Organic Farm in Shunyi after struggling to find quality produce for their new restaurant, Mrs Shanen's. Soon they found themselves with acres of organic greens, heritage breeds of chickens and pigs and a flourishing, community-supported agriculture programme.

With top-tier produce sorted, Mrs Shanen's has been killing it for what seems like forever now, and their other venture, Green Cow City Café, is no different. Don't even think about coming here and not getting a bagel. Freshly toasted and warm, these guys are strong contenders for best bagel in the city. Shan En and Chen have got nearly two decades of baking under their belts and you can taste it in the impossibly light and airy centres beneath crisp exteriors. On a Saturday morning a fresh, hot, classic bagel spread with farmhouse herb cream cheese is transformative.

Courtyard south of Building 13, Sanjiefang, Jiuxianqiao, Chaoyang district

Da Xiao (CBD)

In the days of yore, when an air of optimism used to flutter through the hutongs, Da Xiao (or Big Small Coffee) established a faithful following by providing what is, quite simply, the best value coffee in the city; a mere 22RMB for a top-notch flat white, and 25RMB a latte that good was value unheard of elsewhere, and a sad day it was when the bricks arrived at its doorstep. Fortunately, they sprung back post-bricking to continue the fine work at two new locations – a Jingshan Park-adjacent hutong space, and a compact counter in the CBD. The owner, Zhang Yipeng, is also an avid tea enthusiast, whose ground-tea chapuccino (25RMB) and chaffogato (35RMB) creations give this place another edge.

5Lmeet (formerly Trader's Hotel), 1 Jianguomenwai Daijie, Chaoyang district

There Will Be Bread

Sandwiched between two of our long-time favourite peddlers of French foodstuffs – The French Butcher and Comptoirs de France – this bakery has its work cut out for it. But the warm space and pungent aroma of freshly baked pastries and ground espresso beans are comforting from the start.

The almond croissants are our favourite by far, with ample coating of sliced almonds adding a pleasing crunch to a filling of silky almond paste; the pain au chocolat adds much sweetness to a pungent cup of espresso while the fresh baguette – ostensibly bought to accompany our dinner – barely makes it home. They are respectable takes on classics that hardly rewrite the book on the age-old staples of French baking, but are a pleasant addition to an area already rich in options for Western confectionery.

5-155 Xingfucun Zhong Lu, Chaoyang district

Gertz Danish Bakery

While it is technically possible to live out a fulfilling existence without having ever visited a Danish bakery, you don’t want to leave it to chance. Handsomely-clad in essential Danish design and heady with the yeasty allure of rye, baked dense and fresh daily, Gertz Danish Bakery is every bit as lifestyle-core as its instantly popular neighbour Moleskine Café, a space with which it has a lot in common, patronage notwithstanding. The key distinction, however, is Gertz's range of authentic Danish-baked goods, prepared daily with eight generations of baking expertise kneaded into them.

At the counter, creative sourdoughs like potato and carrot (38RMB), the Danish farmer loaf (38RMB) and classics bricks of Gertz dark bread (49RMB) head up a baked offering unrivalled in Beijing, while traditional sweets, such as Danish coffee cake Fynsk brunsviger, moist with candied brown sugar, cinnamon and much butter, and the stewed apple-filled Copenhagen (18RMB), are inspiring. Again, the coffee here is rungs short of the best in Beijing, slighted as it is by long-life milk (when will they learn?), but for a sweet bite and a loaf under the arm on the way out, Gertz is divine.

North side of Taikoo Li South, Yaxiu Beilu, Chaoyang district

Basic Coffee

This café is lit. Not quite in the 'Turn down for what' party sense, but in the ambient stakes, Basic Coffee’s swathing in natural straight-from-the-sun glow makes it one of the most pleasant perches in town – belying its location in the rather dilapidated Jianwai SOHO, just south of Guomao. Even better, it serves up some of the best brews in town, and is one of the few with a creamy, summery nitro – nitrogen-blasted cold brew – on tap (38RMB). Food is limited to a fair selection of cakes – opt for the king: the carrot (29RMB).

3F, Building 9, Jianwai SOHO East, Henghui Dong Lu, Chaoyang district

Voyage Coffee

Just around the corner from the crowds on Nanluoguxiang, this cool coffee spot is all exposed brick walls and medicinal looking crockery. The coffee's not half bad either, and the space is big and quiet enough work in.

80 Beiluoguxiang, Dongcheng district

Soloist Coffee Co (Dashilar)

Soloist Coffee Co's downstairs coffee bar takes a clinical approach to its craft: the coffee is roasted in house and stored in an old police station locker in glass jars, labelled with the beans' diverse notes and exotic origins. Sit back in one of the chairs, salvaged from an old church, and observe the ritualistic pour-over (35-55RMB).

The staff are professorial and passionate: when we nibbled on our delectable blueberry cheesecake (35RMB), they politely advised us that doing so would change the subtle notes of the coffee. That attention to detail results in one spectacular cup of coffee.

39 Yangmeizhu Xiejie, near Maishi Jie, Dashilar, Xicheng District

Bracket

Skippering Beijing's third-wave coffee boom at present is another multi-storey lifestyle receptacle, only this one shares its address with Beijing nightlife and cultural institutions Mix and Vics. Three storeys and a rooftop sees Bracket towering over the aforementioned both physically and morally, with floor-to-ceiling windows that a) flood with light and b) offer uninterrupted views of the hallowed Gongti stadium, its surrounding clubs and the exiting patrons thereof, whose Sunday morning shamewalks just got shamier.

On level one, a frenzied battalion of baristas – there must be ten of them – swarm over your order like flies on T-bone. Of all the imported elements of the Western coffee experience to make it to Bracket, aloof-but-informed service has not, but when our latte (42RMB – ouch) lands, it doesn't matter. Poured into a wide-mouth cup, the fractal beauty of the rosetta foreshadows a ripper cuppa that would stand up in the world's specialist coffee cities. While less euphoric, the ham and cheese panini (58RMB) does what it says on the box: cloud-soft foccacia bread with ham, cheese, mushrooms and peppers form a crowded-but-nourishing accompaniment to the main-event latte.

North Gate of Workers' Stadium, 8 Gongti Bei Lu, Chaoyang district

For full details on each café, hit 'Read more'.

More from Time Out Beijing