The city of Taipei, Taiwan is famed for many things—like Taipei 101, beef noodle soup, and boba milk tea—and now coffee, as the city has quickly become on par with the best coffee cities around the world. This didn’t happen overnight, and it took a few key moments to help elevate Taipei’s coffee scene to where it is today.
Coffee first made its way to Taiwan in the early 20th century while under Japanese rule. During this time, the Japanese experimented and successfully planted coffee in Central Taiwan while also bringing cafe culture to Taipei. But it wasn’t until the early 2000s when the coffee scene really started to expand and become mainstream. During this time, Starbucks opened multiple locations, followed by convenience stores (7-Eleven, Family Mart, etc.) serving freshly brewed coffee at a lower price point. With coffee continuing to gain in popularity, the specialty coffee scene also developed with highly knowledgeable roasters and baristas popping up around the city, as profiled in our 2018 guide to the city. Some of these early third wave coffee pioneers even went on to become World Coffee Champions, including 2014 World Cup Tasters Champion Pang-Yu Liu (劉邦禹), 2016 World Barista Champion Berg Wu (吳則霖), 2017 World Brewers Cup Champion Chad Wang (王策), and just recently, 2026 World Latte Art Champion Bala (林紹興).
Now anywhere you visit in Taipei, you are likely to find multiple high-quality cafes within a short walk from each other. Balancing high quality coffee with aesthetic interiors, Taipei’s best cafes offer spaces for people to enjoy refined coffee while working, studying, or chatting with friends. Taipei’s cafes range from intimate, design-driven spaces to those that open onto the street, blending seamlessly into the neighborhood. You will often come across cafes run by the owners themselves, resulting in a cafe scene that feels both personal and luxurious.
Taipei visitors may be surprised to find that cafes’ opening hours match the more relaxed pace of the city. Unlike other cities where cafes may open early for the early risers, many cafes in Taipei open around 10 or 11 in the morning and stay open past dinner time.
The list below features a slice of Taipei’s best cafes and is in no way exhaustive; consider this a tight selection to get you started, and as always, talk to the baristas wherever you visit about their favorite places across the city.
Rufous Coffee Roasters
Few names come up as often in Taipei’s specialty coffee scene as Rufous Coffee Roasters. Long before the current wave of minimalist cafes and design-forward spaces, Rufous helped establish a more serious, craft-driven approach to coffee in the city by focusing on roasting, technique, and consistency. That foundation is still very much intact today, even as the brand has expanded to an additional location.
Dark wood tones and classic atmosphere create warm settings while maintaining the attention on the coffee. What stands out most is how visible the process is. In their second location, a roasting room sits within plain sight, reinforcing the idea that everything begins in-house. Nearby, a cold slow drip station featuring their house blend works quietly in the background, taking a full day to prepare the batch for the following day. The attention to the craft is in line with how the cafe operates in a methodical and detail-oriented manner.
The menu reflects that same mindset. Coffee can be experienced through multiple methods including espresso, pour-over, and cold drip. Then there’s the thoughtful espresso-based set option, where you can taste two different drinks side by side.
The cafe continues to remain popular with both locals and visitors. Even on a weekday afternoon, it fills up easily with groups chatting, couples sharing tables, and individuals working quietly. It’s not a place designed for quick turnover, but somewhere you can spend an afternoon, with the coffee craft always running in the background.
Simple Kaffa
One of the city’s most recognized names in specialty coffee, Simple Kaffa, has defined the upper echelon of Taiwan’s coffee scene. Its reputation is built on the competition success of its founder, Berg Wu, winner of the 2016 World Barista Championship, along with its detail-driven approach that carries through every part of the experience. Drinking coffee at Simple Kaffa feels like fine dining, with wait staff explaining the menu in detail and checking in on each customer’s experience.
The menu includes a wide range of options, with baseline offerings priced slightly higher than the city average. On the high end there are Geshas reaching NT$1,500 (~$45 USD) a cup. This positions the cafe as more of a destination for coffee enthusiasts than a neighborhood stop.
Walking into the spacious, open flagship space, you’ll find baristas making pour-overs with extreme precision using their own proprietary Simple Kaffa Drip Shower pour-over filter kit. There’s also a clear sense of pride in their achievements. Awards and accolades are prominently displayed along the exposed brick wall, a reminder of the cafe’s standing on the global stage.
Normal Coffee
With multiple locations across Taipei and expansion to other cities on the island in the works, Normal Coffee and All Day Roasting Company have grown into a local coffee group. It has expanded steadily while keeping a clear division between the two concepts.
All Day Roasting Company leans toward an all-day cafe format, pairing food with a full coffee menu across several Taipei locations and a presence in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s southern port city. Normal Coffee, on the other hand, is stripped back and coffee-focused with a smaller footprint, streamlined experience, and an emphasis on higher-end beans for the purist connoisseurs.
Across both brands, the foundation is the same. Roasting happens on-site, and the menu covers both espresso-based drinks and pour-overs. It’s a setup that allows for consistent, high quality coffee beverages while still catering to different clientele.
Normal is particularly unique for its approach to sourcing. Alongside coffee beans of more typical origins are Taiwan-grown coffee beans from the Alishan Mountain Range. It’s not something you see everywhere in the city, partly due to cost and limited supply, and it points to a broader effort to highlight local production.
As the group continues to expand, both All Day and Normal maintain a clear identity—one broader and more lifestyle-driven, the other more tightly focused on the coffee itself. Together, they offer a look at how Taipei’s cafes can scale while keeping quality and sourcing at the heart of its business.
The Folks
Tucked in a quiet corner in central Taipei’s Da’an neighborhood, The Folks may be easy to miss at first but is a spot you’ll find yourself visiting again and again. The cafe has been running for over a decade as a one-man operation, resulting in consistent coffee every time. Beans are roasted on-site, often with a focus on beans from Guatemala, resulting in balanced, espresso-based drinks.
It’s a small shop with just six seats at the counter along with benches outside. At the center is a Slim Jim Idrocompresso by Kees van der Westen, and everything revolves around it. The pace is steady, not rushed, and the bar seating feels more like a chef’s counter than a typical cafe. You can sit and relax with a book, or just stop in for a quick coffee to go, at a slightly reduced price.
One drink that stands out is the con panna: a single espresso with honey, dash of milk, and topped with cream and cacao. It adds just enough sweetness without overpowering the coffee.
Kite Coffee
Kite Coffee sits somewhere in between casual and more polished. The first thing you notice is how put together everything feels. Walls are lined with art and design magazines, album covers, and posters that feel personal rather than staged. The menu is simple, split evenly between espresso-based drinks and pour-overs that are clean and balanced, in line with the overall feel of the space.
On weekday mornings, it’s quiet and easy to sit for a bit, have a coffee, and flip through a magazine. There’s a small seating area inside for those who are seeking a quiet corner, while the porch out front provides a semi-enclosed space that still feels connected to the surroundings. You can stop in quickly, but it’s also the kind of place you may end up staying longer than planned.
Coffee Along
Coffee Along is among Taipei’s most unique cafes and provides a clear contrast to the majority of the city’s enclosed cafe spaces. The coffee shop opens directly to the street, creating a constant flow of light and air. It feels connected to what’s happening outside, while still offering a space to settle into for a bit.
The menu is focused entirely on espresso-based drinks, keeping things simple for the purists. The shop is run by the owner, who has a background in coffee R&D and developing blends, which shows in the cafe’s well-executed offerings.
Just over a year in, Coffee Along already feels like a neighborhood fixture. People stop in, stand at the counter for a quick coffee, or linger along the open edges of the space. It’s an easygoing setup that puts as much emphasis on the environment as it does the coffee.
After5
Set inside a compact, two-story house, After5 feels more like a friend’s house than a cafe, something you don’t see often in Taipei. The lofted second floor overlooks the main coffee bar, creating a sense of separation without losing the intimacy of the space. It makes the shop feel less like a quick coffee stop and more like a place you’d linger.
During the day, that could mean a quiet place to sit with a laptop or read for a while. By the afternoon and into the evening, it shifts into a neighborhood hangout spot with people stopping by after work or meeting friends for drinks. The layout supports both, with bar seating downstairs and a slightly more tucked-away feel upstairs.
The menu reflects that same range. Alongside single-origin coffees, there are a handful of signature drinks that incorporate fruit, adding a lighter, more refreshing option. Tea is also part of the lineup and later in the day, the menu expands to include alcohol and beer.
Eric Hsu is a Taipei-based photographer and visual storyteller covering travel and culture across Asia. This is Eric Hsu’s first feature for Sprudge.
