Pennsylvania's 5 Best Cafes In Philadelphia, According To Reviews

As you wander between the historic cobbled streets packed with cute local shops of Old Town and the museums and green spaces of Logan Square on your trip to Philadelphia, you may find yourself wishing you had a hot cup of coffee in your hand. Once you taste what Philadelphia's coffee scene has to offer, though, you may find that a single cup is not enough. There are more fantastic coffee shops and specialty roasters in the city than you could reasonably visit on one short trip, so we have narrowed your choices down to a short list of the best cafes in Philadelphia, with the assistance of reviews from locals on Reddit, blogs from people who love coffee so much they travel just to try out the best cafes, and ratings from customers across various review platforms, primarily (but not exclusively) Google Reviews and Yelp.

The results of our search brought us to five incredible but extremely different cafes. Following our list, you will visit artisan coffee shops brewing phenomenal blends from around the world, taste award-winning roasts sourced from hidden farms on the other side of the planet, and become a part of the story of some of Philadelphia's absolute favorite cafes. Whether you prefer a sweet, sugary speciality latte in a unique flavor or a black pour over that lets you savor the flavor of the beans, you are sure to find something to love on their menus. 

If you want a place to grab a seat, make some progress on the novel you've been neglecting in your to-be-read pile, and sip something warm, look elsewhere as this spot has limited seats. However, if you want to try the best pour over in Philadelphia, you're probably in the right place. Five minutes walk away from Independence Hall you'll find Thank You Thank You, a tiny cafe with a lively, friendly atmosphere where the baristas are likely to draw you into a conversation as they artfully craft you the perfect coffee. "This small little gem makes the best coffee I've had ... in Philly, and it's the best by a wide margin," one local guide wrote on Google. "The small cozy setting was exactly what I was hoping for from a great local cafe, and the staff were incredibly helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable."

Founder Cody McGregor once worked at another Philadelphia staple, ReAnimator Coffee, but he found his real passion after acquiring and sharing international roasts to share with other coffee lovers during the 2020 COVID pandemic. As noted by The Philadelphia Inquirer, in 2024 alone, Thank You Thank You introduced its local clientele to coffee from 29 different roasters around the world. While you might not be able to snag one of the few seats in the shop, today, if you stop to chat with the coffee experts behind the counter they will be able to help you choose an interesting roast from one of their rotating cast of guest roasters that you are sure to enjoy.

The story of one of Philadelphia's favorite cafes starts 8,861 miles away in the Vietnamese province of Lam Dong, where the red volcanic soil of the Central Highlands is the perfect fertile home for coffee plants. The beans harvested here make their way all the way to Philadelphia to be roasted, brewed, and served up at Càphê Roasters, which proudly bills itself as Philadelphia's first and only Vietnamese coffee roaster. Its menu has twists on Vietnamese coffee staples. You can enjoy coffee brewed in a traditional phin and served with condensed milk, a salted Vietnamese coffee made with a cold foam, or try out something off their rotating specials menu too, like a jassy cà phe sua, an iced Vietnamese espresso combined with condensed milk, jasmine tea, and jasmine matcha foam. If you're hungry, they also have a selection of bánh mì and sandwiches to choose from.

"Honestly maybe one of the best coffee shops I've ever been to. A bit out of the way but worth the trip," One reviewer on Google stated. Kensington is not a neighborhood most tourists choose to visit. Once an industrial hub, its streets are lined with old, out of use factory buildings. Some have been transformed for modern aesthetics and new uses. Nowhere is that more obvious than Càphê. Its red brick exterior seems like it still belongs to the past, but inside the brick walls and ceiling have been painted white and the wide windows bathe the interior in sunlight. The wide open space has scattered tables you can grab after placing your order at the wooden bar. Càphê's founders, Raymond John and Thu Phram, hope to transform Kensington, too, and write a new chapter for their neighborhood, donating a portion of its profits to support the local schools, hiring local residents, and partnering with other local businesses.

There are plenty of cafes to choose from in the artsy riverfront neighborhood of Manayunk, but you probably won't find any serving a better cup of coffee than Pilgrim Roasters. Founded by Dan Faehl and Ryan Connelly, Pilgrim's quest is simple: to bring the best quality coffee from around the world back home to Philly in a way that locals could afford. The appearance of this shop is plain and unpretentious, with gray walls, a wooden bar, wood floors, a few tables, and a blackboard behind the bar with an equally unadorned menu. If you want coffee, the most elaborate thing you can order is a mocha. That's because here the star of the show is the beans.

If you're used to bold, dark roasted coffee with subtle chocolate notes, you might be surprised by the taste at Pilgrim. Inspired by Scandinavian roasting traditions, the beans are lightly roasted so that you can enjoy more of the natural flavor notes of the coffee you try. "Expertly roasted coffee full of aroma, and nuance, contemporary flavor profiles while celebrating origin, and artistic, precise extraction makes this the best coffee in the city," one reviewer wrote on Pilgrim Roasters' Facebook Page.

Like the fruit that gives this coffee shop its name, it took time for Persimmon Coffee to grow. It started as a mobile pop up, with co-founders Chaereen Pak and Sawyer Beckley serving simple drip coffee to customers across Philadelphia, even in the cold winter weather. In 2022, the cafe opened its doors in trendy Fishtown. The shop has a minimalist white design with the neon words "you are enough" written on the wall in script. Something about this special place keeps loyal customers coming back again and again.

This isn't a shop that likes to surprise with its roasts, instead, they aim to create coffee that appeals to everyone (and then spruce it up with a specialty flavor, if that's what you like). While some shops offer a wide variety of beans to try, Persimmon chooses to narrow its focus, limiting itself to a single new coffee every month. When a new one comes around, the old one is done, so the next time you're in Philadelphia the shop will be brewing up something new. If you want to try some unique flavors, venture into their specials, which could include anything from blueberry preserves to black walnut bitters, with whimsical names like foolish tiger, cloud dancer, and midwinter memory. As one coffee connoisseur on Google stated after ordering one of their specials: "It was delicious — unlike anything I've ever tasted ... flavors reminded me of that childhood joy of eating a popsicle on a hot summer day, syrup running down your chin and fingers — only this time, it was the grown-up version: cleaner, calmer, and just as full of delight."

While plenty of specialty coffee shops start out sourcing roasted beans and then start roasting their own blends as they grow, some do things in the opposite order. Greenstreet Coffee Co. was founded in 2011 by Chris and Tom Molieri in Point Breeze where they set out to bring excellent coffee from around the world back to Philadelphia. In 2013, Greenstreet opened up a cafe to serve their roasts directly to customers. Today, you can find the baristas at Greenstreet serving up drinks in spring green mugs from behind a metal and wood bar in a brightly lit cafe on South 15th Street.

"Easily my favorite café in Philly. They rotate through a diverse and high quality set of light and dark beans and feature different ones every day on drip and they'll pour over for you to try too ... My favorite aspect is the community, they have a friendly and proficient team of baristas who go beyond just making your drinks," one customer wrote on Google. In addition to single origin black coffees straight from the roaster, you can try espresso drinks with a rotating menu of specialty flavors. At the time of writing, they have a sweet honey cinna bun latte for the season. If you want to really get to know their coffee, though, you'll need to step outside the cafe and into a cupping. Send an email to the shop to see if there's a cupping during your trip to Philadelphia so you can get an insider's look, smell, and taste of Greenstreet Coffee Co.

To find the absolute best coffee shops in Philadelphia, we started by looking at lists of recommendations and reviews from locals, travelers, and coffee connoisseurs on Reddit and blogs from specialty coffee fans who travel specifically to visit cafes. Even though our goal was to find the top-rated cafes in the city, we chose not to begin our search by metrics alone, as those numbers can be skewed by one or two extremely positive or negative reviews. By beginning our search with reviews specifically from people we know are serious coffee fans, we knew that any of the cafes we selected would provide a delicious, high quality coffee for travelers to try while they explore Philadelphia. 

We then compiled a list of the top cafes most often mentioned in conversations about the absolute best cafes in the city. From there, we switched to pure review data. We recorded the average review score at time of writing for each cafe on Google Reviews and Yelp, and when available, we also factored in Facebook and Tripadvisor reviews. We did not include review sites that had a very small number of ratings for our chosen cafes, to ensure that the ranking was not unfairly swayed. We averaged these rankings together and selected the top five shops that had the best reviews overall.