Glasgow's Coffee Scene

    Next up for a visit is Riverhill. It is on the northside of Gordon Street between Renfield Street and West Nile Street. Just next door to Tantrum Donuts if you need a little sugar fix! It's a tight little unit with a couple of seats in the window and bench seating along the wall. Outside seating is available but Gordon Street is busy so it’s not peaceful but good to people watch ! The business started in Helensburgh with their courtyard restaurant which is well worth a visit if you are down that way. It was an early champion of its coffee roaster www.deargreencoffee.com which started in 2010 and is still based in the east end of Glasgow. Recently voted as Micro-Roastery of the year for 2025 by Roast Magazine, it’s hard to find a better coffee roaster in Scotland. They are the first roastery outside the US to make the grade! Lisa, who runs Dear Green, is also an advocate of the Living Wage and the environment with her company also being B Corp certified. Off those good fo...

Next up is Outlier in the East End of the city centre. This is quite a unique space in a former textile studio with a rustic feel with the original sandstone walls exposed and polished concrete and oak furniture and fittings. It has a busy and inviting atmosphere – understated cool! There is plenty on offer with tasty in house baked cakes and breads and a menu for breakfast and lunch using locally sourced ingredients. Coffee is supplied by thegoodcoffeecartel.com a coffee roaster based in Glasgow with a cafe themselves in Cornwall Street in Glasgow. I had a couple of coffees today, tasting their filter as well as an espresso. Both were beautiful smooth coffees, and the espresso pulled was particularly well made. Sitting alongside these wonderful coffees is a carefully put together menu with highlights such as the devilled crab on sourdough with a poached egg and what I consider to be the best sandwich in Glasgow is the fried chicken sandwich. Itself it can be considered a meal for tw...

Next up on my coffee trail is Spitfire, which is in the heart of the Merchant City. I’ve been looking forward to this one as it features in the Independent Coffee Guide Scotland. It did not disappoint with great coffee, tasty selection of cakes, all day breakfast and a great playlist on the day I visited. Not to mention friendly and helpful staff. They extract all the coffee shots on a lovely red La Marzocco FB70 espresso machine. They have their own special roast called the Signature Gunner Roast. You can enjoy it while you visit or buy a bag to take home with you. It is a blend of Colombian and Brazilian beans, roasted by Spitfire Coffee Roasters to bring out the chocolate and nutty notes. The only downside I have experienced from visiting the shop several times is that I feel that your clothes smell after having been in the coffee shop. Potentially the old-style building doesn't have a good extractor fan to get rid of all the smoke, leaving a smell on customers' clothes. Wit...

My next visit on Glasgow’s coffee scene was Laboratario Espresso located in the heart of the city centre on West Nile Street sitting just behind Buchanan Street. The idea from the owner’s is to expose the feel of Italian espresso culture to Glasgow and its visitors. The shop is a small retail unit at the bottom of the 2 West Regent street office block. Internally the shop offers a double height space fitted out with cement board and wooden slatted scaffold boards reclaimed from the Glasgow School of Art with a wax finish that you can smell upon entry. There is 10/12 covers internally with additional benches outside for the rare sunny days in Glasgow. Open since 2013 I have been visiting the shop regularly since I started studying at university. It has become a firm favourite due to the high-quality coffee and location. The Lab is fitted with a lamarzocco.com coffee machine which is an industry leader in the market of commercial coffee machines. A standard coffee menu is available withi...

Welcome to my blog on the growing coffee scene in Glasgow. I will be visiting and sharing my thoughts on some of Glasgow’s best independent coffee shops. I will be visiting shops that focus on quality coffee and aesthetics within their shops, as I feel coffee is moving away from the typical Starbucks and Costa, and it is becoming more of an art and a skill to be able to make a good quality coffee. My first trip was to Perch and Rest, located on the corner of Otago Street. The shop specialises in the type of beans they use offering a variety of different kinds with unique tasting notes that you might not be able to get from many other shops. Perch and Rest offer all kinds of espresso and 8 filter coffee’s and have a small cake/pastry selection to compliment the high-quality coffee. Perch and Rest has its own coffee roasting machine and also offers customers the option to buy bags of beans that the shop uses such as beans from Manhattan Roasters and Kawa. Having been to the shop a fair f...