Where to get a cup of coffee in Warsaw?

Seriousley. I'm in Warsaw working for about 7 months now and to get a coffe in the city i have to take buses/trams/metro and i live in Mokotow. To me this is outrageouse. Where i'm coming from(Romania) you only need to go like 5-10 min on foot to find a coffe place, and eaven with all those coffe places you can still feel there is still room for more couse all of them seem to be almost full with people. Why not in Poland also? Eaven if you find a coffe place, they charge you like 12-20 zl for a coffe, this is waaay too much for a coffe. I can understand the prices beeing high becouse there are only a few coffe places but why people don't open more coffe places? The only thing i can think of is the law about non-smocking spaces or something similar (i don't know how is it in Poland). I'm actually thinking on investing in a coffe place if i could, but i'm a foreigner whithout eaven a Pesel nr, so i don't think i can do that. But i will look into it.

Tourists........ Coffee no such thing in Poland its called Vodka.. Get with it

vodka is great but tallkig the same bullshit about poles and vodka over and over is already boring. when there was no places to go out people made a home parties and drank mainly vodka, now if we wanna have fun we go out to the pubs or clubs and drink beer or drinks. people drink coffee at home and at work, custom of going out to the caffeteria isn't really popular.

Well then the price of coffe in coffeterias are way out of the ordinary. If the need for it is not there the price should be small, but is the exact oposit. In Romania, a country that is very much similar to Poland only the economy is a bit lower then in Poland but not by much, the prices of other things are about equal, like gas, food is about the same, eaven the currency 1zl~=1leu, and in Romania i can get a coffe in a nice place for about 3zl and maybe 5zl if i'm going in a reeealy nice place but in Poland i could not find cheaper then 8zl and that was in a dump of a coffeteria. At CoffeHeaven is atleast 10zl a coffe and they only give you a cup of coffe to go, you can't drink a coffe at them. That is why i'm saying that the prices just don't seam right to me.

there are loads of coffee shops/cafes in warsaw. I dont know about Mokotow but in centrum and by the Warsaw University you can just pick one. True it is expensive especially considering you can get a full stomach for less than 10zl and a cup of coffee will run you at least 8.

Good point about the comparison in food/coffe prices. But i'm just not used to needing to take a bus/tram/metro to go for a freackin coffe. I don't need a nice place like Hard Rock Caffe, a dump would be enough, just to be able to drink my coffe in peace AND smock a cigarete.

BTW, how is the law in Poland about coffeterias? Can you open a coffeteria(no eating, just drinking coffe or tea, maybe a bear but not too much alcohol) only for smockers or you have to have space for non-smockers too?

You can order a coffee in a bar and smoke - simples!

Unfortunately in many places this is true! but soon, very soon it will change - at last - no smokers in public places ! :D

and what about coffee places... it's not that popular in Poland to go to such places so there is not too many clients and that's why prices are high.

Idiot. A cafe is by definition not a public place: it is a private place.

If you don't believe me, try sitting in a cafe and refuse to buy anything. You'll soon find out how public the place is.

I don't come to your property and dictate to you whether I can smoke there or not. So what the fuck gives you the right to dictate to other people what can be done on their property? If you don't like a place allowing people to smoke, just don't go there.

maybe you...


ok, you're right it's not public place... on the other hand I always have to breathe in smoke in places like bus stations, my own balcony!, office toilets and so on... moreover no smoking rooms in restaurants are often a fiction...

You do not have to breathe smoke in bus stations: it is illegal to smoke in bus stations. If you don't want to breathe smoke on your own balcony, don't let people smoke on it. The reason you breathe smoke in office toilets is that there is no room for people to smoke in, so people who want smoking banned have only themselves to blame for smokey toilets.


A) That's bullshit. The biggest coffeeshop chain in the country completely forbids smoking.
B) Complain to the management/owners and then do not go back to that establishment. Don't whine to me. I don't smoke in places where it is forbidden. However, if smoking is banned in all enclosed places, I'll start to smoke anywhere I want regardless of what the rules are.

where's my starbucks.. no startbucks in poland... <sad>

Wouldn't it be Gwiazdazłoty?

Did i open a can of worms? Unfortunatley new laws come out that prohibit smockin more and more. I see this as a clear sign of human rights violation, but then again i'm a smocker, if i would be a non-smocker maybe i would see it diferentley. Recentley i had to take a longer, 12 hour trip with train, and if you play by the rules you can't smocke anywhere, not on the train and not eaven in stops. So what can a smocker do? Non-smockers get's everything and smockers get nothing. How is this fair? A train has multiple vagons, when you buy a ticket you should be able to buy a ticket on smocking or non-smocking place and problem solved, but NO, non-smockers HAVE to have everything, the whole damn train. I ask again, how is this fair? Freedom of choice is our birthright, use it people, choose a ticket in a non-smocking vagon and let smockers have their places too. This can be aplied anywhere, coffeterias too, couse that's where we started this discusion, if i as owner want to invest in a coffeteria for smockers i should be able too, if non-smockers want to come inside they are welcomed BUT don't start bitchin about the smocke if you do choose to go in.

Oh well a rant has it's uses, but unfortunatley that's what it is, JUST a rant nothing more, and unfortunatley things will only change for the worst at least for the smockers, for non-smockers things change for the better. Riiiiight this IS fair.

What about Waynes Coffee? There are a few of these around Warsaw.

Never tried them. I wanted to find out whether Wayne had drunk his own products but nobody seemed to know.

Pretty decent. Apparently the largest chain of coffeeshops in Sweden. From what I remember they are entirely non-smoking.

silly smoker, it's not like you get "nothing", you can of course get a nice lung cancer...
besides most of trains have cars for smokers, and where's your freedom of choice when I have to queue or walk behind somebody who is smoking, and that way I'm also breathing in cigarette smoke eww.. disgusting

Some of the world's oldest living people are smokers. Fear is much more dangerous. It actually gets to the point where anti-smoking campaigns pass a certain threshold of intimidation where it just becomes funny. Sorry to all you heart disease and lung cancer sufferers!

That is a bit steep. Romania and Bulgaria are by far the most backward and extremely corrupt countries in the whole of the EU. God knows how they were ever admitted into the club.

As for coffee... I drink only at home and at work, but wherever you go in Warsaw there is always somewhere a coffeplace nearby.

They've announced that they're opening branches in PL this year.

YAY! I was starting to worry about what would happen when I went there.


I have some kind of allergy to cigarette smoke... I can barely breath and usually start coughing if I'm so much as walking behind someone who's lighting up and the wind changes >_< Thankfully most people on campus here are not into it.


They usually do have smoking sections... at least they did a few years back when I took one to zakopane... they had their own wagons and that was cool.

Problem with restaurants and bars is that the smoke doesn't read very well, and thus saunters over to the non-smoking section. And you know the whole poor air circulations/ joined ac sys doesn't help matters.


You're forgetting one thing, smoking is a choice (addictive or not, still a choice). If you can't sit for the length of a meal / coffee without lighting one up you should rethink your state of being.

As second hand smoke isn't healthy (say what you will, it's true) people shouldn't be subjected to it if they don't want to. What about all the waitresses forced to work in a smoke filled room for hours on end?

smoker cafe n' stuff are allowed (at least in the states) but employers have to get all their staff to accept it if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, and in such nice, stationary places there's always that cool thing known as outside that you can go and light one up before going back in and enjoying food.

yup.. but it won't be like everywhere, and I don't live near Warsaw.. my soul is crying for some raspberry muffins..

speaking from a student pulled to countless starbucks outings...
their coffee sux
$5 USD for a cup of watered down stuff that is only saved by making it a frapp (which is more a milkshake than a coffee)

who cares about coffee.. I WANT SOME MUFFINS!!! :[

Quit drinking that stuff. It's not good for you. It's loaded with caffeine, stains your teeth and ruins your health. It's a waste of money. So is smoking. Why do you poison your body with unhealthy habits? Think how much better and alive you would feel if you would stop poisoning yoursrelf. That's why so many people in Poland are depressed, they drink coffee, beer, vodka and smoke trying to erase their problems but they are making them even worse. I have never seen so many people smoke as in Poland. And then they complain they have no money.

And smoking is not spelled smocking.

I know about second-hand smocking, i wasen't always a smocker. I really do understand you non-smockers, but it is not true that on trains there are smocking vagons, at least on the one i was for more then 12 hours there waren't any.


I'm not talking about restaurants, i agree that nobody should smocke in places where you can eat, but coffeterias should not be included in this.I'm not saying that it should be all coffeterias for smockers only, make some law so the owners should put up big freackin billboard by the entrance "Smockers inside" or something so if a non-smocker do chooses to go inside, then accept the fact that people are smocking there and go somewhere else. If i'm going swiming, you don't see me bitchin that i'm wet are you?


Believe me i'm not arguing with that, i know Romania is corrupt, but that has nothing to do with what i was saying. The economy of Romania and Poland are not THAT far apart and living conditions are about the same but in Poland some of the prices are just crazy. Take for instance internet, in Romania i pay for the exact same internet connection from UPC as in Poland but in Romania is only ~35zl for the medium contract(the 10Mb connection) and in Poland that costs ~90-100zl. The same with coffe, in Romania i can drink a coffe for about 3zl and here is 3 or 4 times more expensive.

not to prolong the sidetopic... but i've yet to see a train where there wasn't at least one smoking car; where was yours? Maybe they just misunderstood or something?

I don't know how it is in Poland, but most cafe I've been to offer food (some offer full-on meals, others just cakes and such). Either way you can always go outside, take 5min to smoke and come back... though the same principle of smoking before/after would seem to work just as well here as it would at a diner *shrug*

well to continue this topic as sidetracked as it is... coffee and cigarettes go together as beer does as well. That said I am a nonsmoker and seem to be alergic to the smoke. It is illegal to smoke in Warsaw at the bus/tram stops yet people smoke directly under the signs. So that being the case I cant see the police actually enforcing any smoking ban. I believe we discussed this topic in an earlier thread. As far as cafes are concerned they seem to be a large part of the upper middle class and upper class culture in Warsaw but not a part of the neighborhood environment. People go out for coffee not to a local shop. There is a nice place in my neighborhood just next to my flat that never has business and is closing. So maybe its just a cultural difference. As far as Starbucks expanding into Poland I have heard this as well but considering they had to close so many shops in the USA recently we will see. And yes their coffee sucks.

HAHAHA i literally chucked lol