Kaffa Koffie: Specialty Coffee in Oost, Amsterdam

There are coffee shops that stock Ethiopian beans, and then there is Kaffa Koffie, a place where the entire programme begins and ends with Ethiopia, and has done since Marcos Desta opened the doors in 2007.

Desta, who grew up in Ethiopia, roasts in-house and sources exclusively from the country's most celebrated growing regions: Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, and the Kaffa forest region that gives the shop its name. The Arabica-only commitment is not a marketing position, Desta has a well-documented view that Robusta simply doesn't meet the bar, and the menu reflects that conviction without needing to announce it.

The Yirgacheffe espresso is the one to start with. Jasmine and dark chocolate come through cleanly, and the extraction carries enough brightness to remind you why washed Ethiopian lots became a benchmark for the rest of the specialty world. The Sidamo pulls differently, rounder, with a mocha-leaning finish that makes it an easier entry point if you're not chasing acidity. Both are available as filter, and the slower format opens up the floral register considerably.

The space is compact and unpretentious. There's no performance here, no elaborate pour-over theatre, no chalk-scripted tasting notes. What you get instead is Desta himself, usually behind the counter, usually willing to talk through the differences between a Kaffa forest lot and a Yirgacheffe cooperative harvest if you give him the opening. That kind of direct, unmediated knowledge from someone with genuine roots in the origin is rare, and it changes how the coffee tastes when you understand where it comes from.

Food runs to sandwiches, paninis, and cake, functional rather than destination-worthy, but enough to justify staying a while. Bags of freshly roasted beans are available to take home, and Desta runs a local delivery operation, the Kaffamobiel, that supplies nearby businesses. It's a detail that says something about how this place operates: small, direct, and thoroughly embedded in the neighbourhood it has served for nearly two decades.