Is coffee a big deal in Belgrade?
Yes — coffee is central to Serbian culture, and Belgrade is widely described as coffee-obsessed. It is also commonly cited as home to one of Europe's earliest coffee houses — a claim worth enjoying but treating as reported rather than settled fact. For a long time the standard cup here was Turkish-style: finely-ground, unfiltered coffee, brewed and served in the traditional way. That tradition has not gone anywhere. What has changed is that it now sits alongside a substantial specialty-coffee movement — micro-roasters and specialty cafés serving espresso-based and pour-over coffee.
The two worlds coexist comfortably. You can have a thick, strong, slowly-sipped Turkish coffee in the morning and a single-origin pour-over in the afternoon, and neither feels out of place. Understanding both is the easiest way to read the city's rhythm — and the easiest way to find the best cafes in Belgrade for whatever mood you are in.
Coffee here is less a beverage than a social institution. "Dođi na kafu" — come for coffee — is a standing invitation to spend time together, not a literal one-cup proposition, and a coffee with a friend can stretch across an entire afternoon. If you only learn one thing about how Belgrade socialises, learn that coffee is the medium.
What is Serbian (domaća) coffee?
Traditional Serbian coffee — domaća kafa, literally "homemade coffee," and also called turska kafa (Turkish coffee) or crna kafa (black coffee) — is the older of the city's two coffee experiences: thick, strong, brewed and served in the traditional way, and central to both home life and kafana culture. It is finely-ground, unfiltered coffee simmered in a small copper pot called a džezva, then poured into a small cup, usually with sugar and a glass of water on the side.
The brewing is unhurried by design. The water (and sugar, if you take it) is brought up to heat, the ground coffee is added and briefly brought up again so a rich foam — pena, sometimes called kajmak — forms on top, and the grounds are left to settle to the bottom of the cup. You do not drink it fast: you let it settle, you sip slowly, and you let the conversation stretch out. It is traditionally served with a piece of ratluk (Turkish delight) alongside, the sweetness balancing the bitterness. It is less a quick caffeine hit than a reason to sit down.
Because this style of coffee is so bound up with the kafana — the traditional tavern where coffee and rakija both live — we leave the full story of those rooms to our guide to Belgrade kafanas. For now it is enough to know that a Turkish coffee in a kafana or an old-fashioned café is part of the everyday social fabric, not a tourist ritual.
Where is the best specialty coffee in Belgrade? The Dorćol scene
For specialty coffee, head to Dorćol. The modern specialty wave is built around single-origin beans, micro-roasting and careful brewing — espresso and pour-over rather than the traditional džezva — and this scene is widely reported to cluster in Dorćol, the central district just north and north-east of Republic Square, where micro-roasters and specialty cafés are concentrated. Dorćol is one of the central districts you may already be exploring; we leave its full character to our overview of Belgrade's neighbourhoods and treat it here simply as the specialty-coffee heart of the city.
The roaster most often named as the anchor of this movement is D59B, whose original café Pržionica opened in 2012 and is reported to be the city's oldest specialty-coffee roaster; it
