Café restaurants in Reykjavík
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A
Babalú
More inviting than your own living room, this first-floor cafe is ubercute. It only sells tea, coffee, hot chocolate and the odd crêpe, but once you’ve settled into one of its snug corners you won’t want to move. A teeny wooden balcony gives you a great vantage point over Skólavörðustígur, and in summer there’s occasional live music.
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Kaffi Hljómalind
This commendable organic and Fair Trade cafe is run on a not-for-profit basis and serves as a meeting-place for Reykjavík’s radicals. The interior has been cobbled together in retro style, with wooden floors, 1970s orange-flowered wallpaper, sofas and armchairs, chintzy lampshades and a battered piano. The short menu is composed of burritos, lasagne, soup, bagels, and toast with hummus, and service is entirely erratic; you’ll either get this place or you won’t!
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Café Victor
Victor is a scruffy beery-smelling bar-bistro reminiscent of an English pub (there's even an old red telephone box and premiership footy matches). British families gravitate here for lunch or early-evening meals - English breakfast, burgers, nachos and pizza, or more substantial spare ribs and seafood. At weekends its large spaces fill with drinkers and it turns into a big, loud club.
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Kaffi Mokka
Reykjavík’s oldest coffee shop is an acquired taste. Its decor has changed little since the 1950s, and its original mosaic pillars and copper lights either look retro-cool or dead tatty, depending on your mood! It has a mixed clientele – from older folk to tourists to trendy young artists – and a selection of sandwiches, cakes and giant waffles.
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Svarta Kaffið
Order the thick homemade soup (one meat and one veg option daily for Ikr1290) at this quirky cavelike cafe – it’s served piping hot in fantastic bread bowls. Other light lunches include nachos, burritos, toasted sarnies and lasagne. It’s also a whimsical nightspot, with African masks and dim lighting adding a certain frisson.
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Café Konditori Copenhagen
For pure cake porn, head to this cafe near the City Hostel – Danish-influenced delicacies flaunt glazed strawberries, curls of chocolate and dribbled cream. It also does more prosaic sandwiches and good coffee, which you can consume from supercomfy leather seats. There’s a branch at the Kringlan shopping centre.
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Grái Kötturinn
This tiny six-table cafe looks like a cross between an eccentric bookshop and a lopsided art gallery – quite charming! Opening hours are odd, but it serves breakfast from 7am weekdays and 8am weekends – toast, bagels, American pancakes, or bacon and eggs served on thick, buttery slabs of freshly baked bread.
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Café Garðurinn
This tiny but tasteful vegie cafe is based around seven tables and the hum of civilised conversation. Choice is limited, but the daily soup and main are always delicious and unusual (we can vouch for the weird-sounding Catalonian tofu balls!). Half portions are available.
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Ömmu Kaffi
Friendly faces greet you at this cosy nonsmoking coffee shop. A short list of edibles includes soup, lasagne, cakes and Icelandic doughnuts, and there are some unusual coffees on offer. Grab a paper or zone out to the mellifluous sound of live jazz (Thursday).
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Té og Kaffi
A Starbucks-style café, complete with barristas and a huge coffee menu (including Baileys and Swiss chocolate flavours). There are plenty of yummy cakes, quiches, salads and soups too. It's popular with families, footsore Saturday shoppers and LP readers.
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Kaffitár
A Starbucks-style cafe, Kaffitár has opted for barristas, flavoured syrups, merchandised mugs and Italian biscuits by the till. The service is personal and there’s even a small play area for toddlers. There’s a branch at the Kringlan shopping centre.
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Kofi Tómasar Frænda
Subterranean Koffin has a studenty feel. Relax with magazines and a snack (nachos, lasagne, sandwiches, cakes or chocolate-coated marzipan) and watch disconnected feet scurry along Laugavegur. At night the place turns into a candle-lit bar with DJs.
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Café Paris
An old favourite, Paris is one of the city’s prime people-watching spots, particularly in summer when outdoor seating spills out onto Austurvöllur square; and at night, when the leather-upholstered interior fills with tunes and tinkling wine glasses. The selection of light meals, including sandwiches, crêpes, burgers, salads and tacos, is secondary to the socialising.
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