Tirana’s café culture: the back story

About Tirana’s café culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Tirana Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Walk any street in Tirana and you will pass a café every few steps, their terraces full from morning to night. Coffee is the social glue of the city: you meet friends, colleagues and family over an espresso or a Turkish coffee, and nobody hurries you.

A café on every corner

Albania has one of the densest café cultures in Europe, and Tirana is its capital. Terraces spill onto the pavements of Blloku, the boulevards and the quiet residential streets, and they fill up early and stay full late.

Espresso and Turkish coffee

Espresso, made Italian-style and very well, is the standard order; a macchiato is just as popular. Kafe turke, Turkish coffee boiled in a small pot, is still served everywhere, especially by older Tiranans. Fresh orange juice and a glass of water come with almost everything.

Ask a Tirana local to meet and the answer is always: let’s have a coffee.

The xhiro

In the early evening, the xhiro, the traditional stroll, fills the boulevards, the pedestrian streets and the Grand Park. It often ends, of course, at a café table.

Café-museums and book cafés

Some cafés are destinations in themselves, such as Komiteti, a café-bar full of objects from 20th-century Albanian homes, and book cafés where you can browse as you drink.

Sweet things

Pastry shops (pastiçeri) sell baklava, trileçe (the milky three-milk cake loved across the Balkans) and Italian-style cakes, and the city’s gelato is excellent in summer.

Our advice: order a macchiato and sit for an hour, as locals do; try a Turkish coffee at least once; and in the evening join the xhiro on the boulevard or around the Grand Park lake before finding a terrace for a last coffee or a drink.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Tirana’s café culture: the back story before you go.