13 of My Favorite Coffeehouses in Vienna

By Tas TóbiásLast updated: Aug. 16, 2025

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Apart from its museums, Vienna's coffeehouse culture is the city's greatest treasure. Since the mid-19th century, locals have been socializing at these grand establishments complete with suit-and-tie-wearing waiters, oversized windows, and neatly laid out newspapers. Journalists, artists, businesspeople – everyone has their go-tos. The coffee itself is usually pretty bad, but despite the recent advance of minimalist new-wave specialty cafes, Viennese love for the traditional coffeehouse hasn’t abated.

Coffeehouses are open throughout the day and serve breakfast, traditional dishes, and pastries (schnitzel, goulash, apple strudel and so on). Wifi is rare, but lingering okay, even expected. Below, you’ll find a selection of my favorites, some with more tourists than others.

A word to the wise: a few coffeehouses have become pure tourist attractions and locals don't go near them – these include Sacher, Hawelka, Central, and Demel.

#1 Café Prückel

An iconic coffeehouse, Cafe Prückel features a vast interior fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows and giant mirror panels that overlook the Ringstraße. Being in the well-off city center means customers are upscale and elegant, but tourists also venture here, as do stylish students from the University of Applied Arts across the street (also with an excellent museum, the MAK).

Prückel owes its inviting midcentury interior to a 1955 refurbishment by architect Oswald Haerdtl (the back section has regained its original Art Nouveau details, but the front is where the action is). The food includes solid breakfasts, Viennese classics such as schnitzel and goulash, and lots of pastries. The newspaper selections, laid out on a stick in typical Viennese fashion, range from local dailies to the New York Times. A true-to-Vienna cafe experience.

#2 Café Bräunerhof

Café Bräunerhof, which opened in 1921, hides in the heart of Vienna's downtown flanked by antique dealers. Weekends can draw tourists, but otherwise the atmosphere is almost comically Viennese: well-dressed locals drop in for a melange and buttered kaiser roll (Buttersemmel) to peruse the morning papers, which are neatly laid out and include German and French publications.

Bräunerhof is known to be a literary cafe and the intellectual air is still palpable (it used to be a favorite of the polemical Austrian writer, Thomas Bernhard). Observing a long-held Viennese tradition, waiters, who are donning suits and bow ties, are not exactly friendly with newcomers.

#3 Cafe Ritter

If you need to give your feet or your wallet a break from Mariahilfer Straẞe, Vienna’s main shopping street, your savior is Café Ritter. Dating back to 1887, it’s the last remaining coffeehouse on this very long stretch of commerce and far better than your number two option – a generic Starbucks.

Ritter delivers a true Viennese coffeehouse experience, almost to the point of being a caricature of itself: stuccoed ceilings, hanging chandeliers, bow-tie-wearing waiters, dark-roasted coffee (the neon sign and the pastry counter are 1950s additions). It might be last Vienna coffeehouse with what the author Paul Hoffman described as “positively obsequious” service: alert, never pushy, observing a century-old playful ritual (rule number one: don't wait to be seated). But Ritter doesn't traffic in mere nostalgia. The food is especially good here. Please don't leave without a bowl of goulash followed by an apple strudel drenched in vanilla sauce. Cash only.

#4 Cafe Tirolerhof

If you're unwilling to wait out the line at Café Sacher, just around the corner from here, slip in to Tirolerhof instead. Sure, the interior is less theatrical, but this old-school cafe is truer to Vienna than Sacher. Here, you can still find elderly aristocrats munching on their apple strudels; fur-wearing ladies absorbed by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung; the local bishop sipping his post-service Sunday melange; adorably old-school waiters barking at customers and one another. Also here: Thonet chairs, Wiener Werkstätte upholstery, and an excellent Sacher torte that isn't overpriced.

#5 Cafe Eiles

Eiles is a perennially busy cafe in Vienna's elegant District 8, a short walk from the city center. Being near the City Hall (Rathaus) means politicians and journalists often congregate here, but so do all sorts of other people, both young and old. As a nod to the 21st century, the servers are casually dressed – no wrinkled smoking jackets here – and the owners make a point of hiring recent immigrants and refugees.

Despite the enormous size of the place, which opened in 1840, there are many snug booths coated in plush red upholstery and ringing small marble-topped tables. Pick one with a view, tuck yourself in, order a cake from the glass display upfront, and observe the scenery. Prices are on the higher end and the food is just average, but you're here for the atmosphere, which is truly Viennese. Open every day until midnight.

#6 Café Schopenhauer

If an old-school and a modern Viennese coffeehouse had an offspring, it would look like Café Schopenhauer. High ceilings, oversized windows, marble-topped tables, creaking floors, yes, but also a sleek concrete counter, open kitchen, and fashionably dressed servers. The menu, too, reflects this fusion of old and new: avocado toast and soy milk matcha appear next to eggs in glass, frankfurters, and buttered kaiser roll. Some dishes are named after famous philosophers ("Simone de Beauvoir" – espresso with a cigarette).

The crowd leans fashionable Millennials and upper-middle-class folks from nearby Währing in District 18. As a hat-tip to the intellectual ethos of the coffeehouse culture, there's an entire corner laid out with books for sale. Why Schopenhauer? The reason is disappointingly prosaic: the cafe is located by Schopenhauer Street.

#7 Cafe Weidinger

Cafe Weidinger is my second home in Vienna but – warning – it may not be for everyone! This old-school, unpretentious establishment is located along the Gürtel in District 16, well away from downtown and its tourist and bourgeois-heavy crowds. Here, you’ll be with regular Viennese: mid-level office workers, community organizers, foreign workers, daydreamers, students. The low price points and the all-inviting atmosphere attract this eclectic group.

Some decades ago, the brown walls must have been yellow, the gray upholstery blue, the formica tables unblemished. Oh well. Apart from alcohol and surprisingly good coffee, they also serve goulash soup, scrambled eggs, and toasted sandwiches. The evenings draw Viennese hipsters, as well as card, pool, and bowling players (the bowling alley is below-ground).

#8 Cafe am Heumarkt

Time stopped sometime around 1960 at Cafe am Heumarkt and I'm still not sure whether despite or because of this am I such a fan of this coffeehouse. It’s always very calm and pleasant here: people playing cards, shooting pool, chatting quietly in the corner. The cozy booths are draped in red artificial leather whose decades-old scars are patched up with inordinate black tapes (a few broken springs here and there).

The two no-nonsense server-owners, who are wonderfully old school, have created an intimate, almost family-like atmosphere. Orders might be called out from the other side of the hall. The daily specials are delicious – soups especially – and it was here that I had the best plate of cabbage noodles of my life (Krautfleckerl!). Hint: If you like Cafe Weidinger, you’ll be at home here, too. Weekdays only!

#9 Cafe Kafka

“Vienna is boring,” something I hear from Budapest friends. All the prosperity leaves no room for a bit of irreverence, they say. Too much melange, too little espresso, if you will. I like to point them to Cafe Kafka to prove this isn’t so. Opened in 2001, this bar draws many people who would seamlessly blend into Budapest’s alternative scene (ironically, Kafka is just steps away from Mariahilfer Straße, the main shopping street). No matter whether you come here at 11 a.m. or 11 p.m., the place is filled to capacity with a mixed crowd.

Vintage film posters decorate the worn walls and vintage too is the wood-burning stove that provides heating in the cool months. Laptops are permitted and there’s wifi and electric outlets for lingerers. A few of the servers are known for their bad attitude, but don't let them spoil your time.

#10 Café Dommayer

Opened in 1924, Dommayer is a neighborhood institution in the upscale Hietzing, within walking distance of the Habsburg summer palace (Schönbrunn). Don’t let the crystal chandeliers and suit-and-tie wearing waiters intimidate you; as with other Viennese cafés, this place is less pretentious than it looks.

The crowd consists of elderly locals who wind down here with the paper, an apple strudel, or a chocolate mousse, and well-informed visitors recharging their batteries after a Schönbrunn visit. Dommayer is owned by Oberlaa, an upscale pastry chain, which means that tortes and confections are on point. Outside the cafe is a memorial to Johann Strauss (Son), who made his debut in 1844 at the Dommayer’s Casino that stood here. Nearby attractions include Adolf Loos's pioneering residential houses – the Scheu and the Steiner Haus – and the Hietzing Cemetery, with the tombs of Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner.

#11 Cafe Korb

A busy cafe in Vienna's city center, Korb used to be the hub of underground artists in the 1960s and 1970s when Vienna was hardly known for its embrace of the new and the unconventional. Today, mostly tourists stumble in here, but the ambiance of the cluttered space has retained some of its irreverence.

A midcentury remodeling left its mark on the interior, which is fitted with linoleum floors and plastic-topped tables (the futuristic but impractical bathroom merits a visit to the below-ground level). The Viennese breakfast dishes and savory classics are solid, with price points that reflect the downtown premium.

#12 Kleines Cafe

Places near Vienna’s main attraction, the Stephansdom, must be taken with a grain of salt, but the Kleines Café is no tourist trap. The inside is truly small – hence "kleines" – and features an idiosyncratic 1970s design by the prominent Austrian architect Hermann Czech. In the vein of his idol, Adolf Loos, Czech used inventive space-maximizing solutions, such as the mirror panels behind the leather booths split by vertical marble partitions. Dim, cozy, and positively strange.

The Kleines Cafe is packed at all times, but try to score a seat from which you can observe the crowd. In the evenings, when tourists have retired, the stylish, longtime regulars often appear. Price points reflect the central location.

#13 Cafe Landtmann

High-flying businesspeople, local aristocrats, influential politicians, and selfie-stick-carrying tourists share this upscale Viennese coffeehouse located across from the City Hall (Rathaus). The most striking feature of the inside is the wonderful wood paneling decorated with inlaid motifs, but I prefer the winterized terrace and its panoramic views onto architect Gottfried Semper's unbridled Burgtheater.

The Viennese classics are both delicious and rather pricey. Landtmann is a see-and-be-seen destination – there’s even coat service, so that we proles and plebs don’t hang our garbs on the chair. The current owner, the Querfeld family, is in charge of other historic cafes as well, such as the Café Museum and Café Mozart.

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