Hangzhou for digital nomads

Best cafes

Hangzhou's coffee scene lives in the gap between two things it does very well: a tea culture that predates every espresso machine in the city, and a commodity-coffee wave that has made a decent Americano cheaper than a decent taxi ride. This list is not a race to the third-wave rope-line. It is twelve rooms across the city where you can sit down, order a coffee, and understand something about how modern Hangzhou drinks. Some are chains you may not have heard of that are eating imported brand share for lunch; some are the legacy Western imports that have grown into the local rhythm; a few are the independent rooms where the coffee is actually the point. We have included a mutton-noodle house and a cat cafe on purpose: the first because you will want a real lunch between counters, the second because leaving it off would misrepresent the actual weekend-afternoon Hangzhou cafe experience. Addresses are verified against public records; if the door has moved since, blame the map, not us.