The best coffee cities around the world

A cup of Giang egg coffee in Hanoi, founded in 1946. The coffee is brewed in a small cup with a filter before the addition of a well-whisked mixture of the yolk and other ingredients.

Ipoh is known for its white coffee (hot, sweet and buttery in taste). Beans are roasted in margarine to give them that taste. The result has a creamy, soup like consistency. Sin Yoon Long is home to that recipe.

Home to Granville Island (a place where art, craft and business mix), Vancouver is also the site of Milano Coffee Roasters, which creates coffee blends that can hold up to 12 different varieties of bean. Vancouver is also home to Aubade Coffee and 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters (where “coffee and doughnuts are paired together like wine and cheese.”)

Lonely Planet points out that Mexico City lies on the doorstep of the country’s coffee-growing regions, which brings beans from farms in Nayarit, Oaxaca, and Veracruz to the customer.

You’d think Starbucks would have made the list since Seattle is where it all began, but Lonely Planet chose otherwise. On midweek mornings at Victrola Coffee in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, customers can smell and taste unique coffees from areas like Rwanda and Burundi. Zeitgeist Coffee rests in the Pioneer Square neighborhood and lets baristas grind and press beans from a local roaster to make the best cup possible.

The Bay Area has four places for coffee geeks to try:

Philz Coffee in the Mission district has drinks like Ambrosia (Coffee of God) and Iced Mint Mojito (an iced coffee with fresh mint).

Ritual Roasters has six locations in the city and tourists are told to try their seasonal espresso (a mix of flavors of the moment with interesting names).

Sightglass Coffee in the South of Market area provides “stellar espresso, drip cofee or batch brew” and it even had the Sparkling Cascara Shrub (made from the dried skins of coffee cherries).

Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters’ claim to fame centers on the bean’s inherent flavor. Customers favor the iced cappuccino, described by Nicholas Cho (proprietor) as “ephemeral.”

Stumptown leads the coffee charge in Portland (it’s “Hair Bender” blend made the top 5 coffees list). Lonely Planet attests this place “out-Starbucks Starbucks” with its coffee reputation. And as long as you’re in the area, check out Voodoo Doughnut, which tops their delicacies in cereal.

A woman performs a traditional coffee ceremony on a hillside at sunrise outside Lalibela, Ethiopia.

This destination combines the fire-roasted coffee ceremony of East Africa with the Italian passeggiata (the evening stroll). Lonely Planet suggests taking in the cafes of Harnet Avenue for some local flavor.

This spot went from a tea locale to a coffee destination in the span of several years thanks to Origin Coffee. Here, visitors watch the siphoning process, in which an immersion brewing device made of glass uses vapor pressure to force hot water into ground coffee. Origin’s seasonal blend is rated as one of the top 5 coffees in the country, per Lonely Planet.

Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. Legend says an Ethiopian herder in the 9th century noticed his sheep acted differently after chewing on the coffee plant (coffee arabica, native to the southwestern highlands of Ethiopia). As the world’s seventh-largest producer of coffee, one asks for coffee here in the local language by saying “Na buna ibakiwo ifeligalehu.” (Fun tidbit: popcorn is often served at the end of coffee ceremonies here.