Best for · Melbourne
Espresso bars in Melbourne
These are Melbourne's espresso bars, most of them small and many standing room only. Patricia and Brother Baba Budan are the CBD classics, Bench and Palace show how far design has gone, Kōhī no Deshi matches each blend to a milk, and Tone is the café of a world latte art champion.
The shops
12
No. 1
Patricia Coffee Brewers
CBD+1 locationMust-try
Patricia has served coffee from a standing-room-only corner of Little Bourke and Little William streets since 2011. The menu is three words long: white, black or filter. All the coffee now comes from its own roastery in Coburg North, and the house espresso and filter change with the season. There are no tables, only a marble bar, brass hooks and a queue out the door most mornings. A second Patricia bar works on Lonsdale Street.
Rear of, 493-495 Little Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 2
ONA Coffee
BrunswickMust-try
Canberra roaster ONA opened this Brunswick café in 2020. Start with Raspberry Candy, the blend founder Saša Šestić used to win the 2015 World Barista Championship. The freezer menu holds more than 20 rare coffees, roasted, rested and frozen in single doses. The bright, minimal bar has separate stations for espresso, milk and filter, with batch brew, pour-over and cold brew on offer. Try the càscara if you want something other than coffee.
22 Ovens St, Brunswick VIC 3056, Australia
No. 3
Brother Baba Budan
CBDMust-try
Brother Baba Budan was the Seven Seeds team's first city café, named after the Sufi who, legend says, smuggled seven coffee seeds out of Yemen. It pours the Seven Seeds house blend and a coffee of the day, usually a single origin, as espresso, filter or nitro. The room has a single communal table, a tiny bar and about 15 seats, with more chairs hanging from the ceiling. Food stops at small cakes and pastries. Expect a wait at peak times.
359 Little Bourke St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 4
BENCH COFFEE CO. Lt Collins
CBD+3 locationsMust-try
Bench is a boutique roaster with its own flagship on Little Collins Street, an angular black-and-white corner bar designed by Arkhe Tekhne. Half the room is the statement bench, built on glass blocks. The coffee menu is short: the basics plus hot and iced filter, cold brew and an espresso tonic, with beans to take home. The only food is dacquoise in flavours such as Uji matcha and black sesame. Bench roasts in Brunswick, where the roastery shares space with a bakery kitchen, and runs two more bars on St Kilda Road.
321 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 5
Kōhī no deshi
BrunswickMust-try
Kōhī no Deshi, Japanese for disciple coffee, is the milk-loving twin of Disciple Roasters next door. Marwin Shaw opened it in December 2023 to serve only milk drinks, with six grinders, four blends and eleven dairy and plant milks, each pairing worked out for the coffee in the cup. The ceramics are his, shaped to hold exact ratios of coffee and milk. Try the affogato: an anaerobic Ethiopian espresso poured over vanilla ice cream from Sundae School.
18 Black St, Brunswick VIC 3056, Australia
No. 6
Core Roasters
Brunswick EastMust-try
Behind a roller door and a forest-green facade, Core Roasters has a long coffee bar, a glassed-in pastry kitchen and a 15-kilogram Roastmax roaster at the back. Co-owner Michael Allen, formerly of Small Batch, pulls espresso on three Decent machines, built to mimic anything from a vintage lever to a modern La Marzocco. Dani Sunario's baking leans on her Southeast Asian heritage: kaya toast, char siu pork tarts, rendang pasties and an espresso banana bread.
14 Barkly St, Brunswick East VIC 3057, Australia
No. 7
Project Zero Coffee Meriton Suites
CBD+1 locationMust-try
Kirk Pearson opened Project Zero in the CBD in 2023, below the Meriton Suites on King Street, and added a second shop on Flinders Street. It roasts its own coffee: fruit-forward house blends such as Strawberry Cheesecake, plus single origins for filter and espresso. In 2026 Pearson moved the milk drinks, most of the business, to espresso pulled ahead of service, a change Broadsheet covered at length; black coffees are still brewed to order from rare releases. Pearson also hosts the Coffee Show podcast.
Store 1/140 King St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 8
Tone coffee
Prahran+1 locationMust-try
Tone is the café of Caleb 'Tiger' Cha, who won the 2015 World Latte Art Championship in Gothenburg a year after his first competition. Milk work is the point here: order a flat white or a latte and watch the pour. The café is on High Street in Prahran, and Tone Coffee Roasters on Queensberry Street in North Melbourne opens every day. Cha has been in coffee since 2008.
shop 7/121 High St, Prahran VIC 3181, Australia
No. 9
Traveller Coffee
CBDGood
Traveller is the Seven Seeds team's second city café, a narrow, lightly toned room meant to recall an old Airstream caravan, with a neon boot hanging over Crossley Street. It is standing room only, with a European-style bar for reading the paper, and the takeaway window is set up to pour filter coffee quickly. The coffee is Seven Seeds, as at Brother Baba Budan, with sandwiches, cakes and pastries on the counter. It closes on Sundays.
2/14 Crossley St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 10
Palace Coffee
CBDGood
Palace Coffee is a standing-room espresso bar in a laneway beneath Monaco House, and it won Best Café Design at the 2025 Eat Drink Design Awards. Kerry Kounnapis Architecture Practice gave it a sculptural oxide-red steel entry, a recessed threshold and a service window that opens the bar to the street. The jury praised a small room that feels purposeful in every detail, a modern take on the old standing-only cafés. Come for a quick espresso at the window.
22 Ridgway Pl, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 11
Little Rogue.
CBDGood
Little Rogue is a laneway café on Drewery Lane, behind a bright blue door, with white walls, birch floors and a lightwell next to the coffee machine, rare this deep in the CBD. It was the first venture of former Plantation baristas Leo Lee and Calvin Ko, and the house blend is Small Batch's Candyman. Sweets come from local bakers, and the walls have hosted work by artists without a space of their own.
12 Drewery Ln, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia
No. 12
Introspection
BrunswickGood
Introspection is a small espresso bar on Wilson Avenue in Brunswick, a short walk from Disciple and Kōhī no Deshi on Black Street. It pours coffee from ONA, the Canberra roaster whose own Melbourne café is on Ovens Street, and opens every day from 7am to 3pm. It makes a good third stop on a Brunswick coffee walk.
6-8 Wilson Ave, Brunswick VIC 3056, Australia
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