Coffee and Kids: Specialty Coffee in IJburg, Amsterdam

Coffee and Kids, IJburg

There is a specific kind of relief that comes from walking into Coffee and Kids on a Tuesday morning. The children have somewhere to go, a proper play area, a workshop, a Montessori-inspired activity run by someone who knows what they're doing, and you have somewhere to sit with a flat white that doesn't taste like an afterthought.

The coffee comes from Lot 61, one of Amsterdam's most respected roasters, and it shows. The espresso is clean and well-extracted, the kind of pull that suggests someone is actually paying attention behind the machine rather than running on autopilot between babyccino orders. That signature babyccino, for what it's worth, is frothed milk done properly, not a gimmick, just a thing the regulars expect and the baristas deliver without fuss.

The crowd here is almost entirely parents, local families and a strong expat contingent who've found in Coffee and Kids something that doesn't really exist elsewhere in IJburg: a place where the coffee programme and the children's programme are taken with equal seriousness. Coworking mornings run with a nanny service on hand, which means the laptops come out and the flat whites keep coming and nobody is managing a toddler with one hand while trying to answer email with the other.

The food is café fare, pastries, snacks, honest and functional rather than ambitious. It fills the gap between drop-off and pickup without trying to be a destination brunch spot, which is probably the right call given everything else the space is doing.

Owner Raquel has built something with a clear point of view: this is not a coffee bar that tolerates children, nor a playgroup that happens to have an espresso machine. The two halves are genuinely integrated, and the result is a space that works harder than most. If you're coming for a contemplative solo pour-over, this is not your place, the energy is social, the noise level reflects the demographic, and the mornings move fast. But if you're a parent in IJburg who wants Lot 61 in your cup while your kid learns something, the calculus here is straightforward.