Kathmandu doesn’t get enough love.
And that’s perhaps because everyone mostly comes to Nepal for one thing: to trek through tea houses and rickety bridges to summit its towering, snow-capped Himalayan peaks. But if you give Kathmandu enough time—and stay aware of the worsening air pollution—you’ll perhaps fall in love with this bustling megacity.
About eight decades ago, you could term Kathmandu as a village, concealed in a valley surrounded by the world’s tallest peaks. Today, it’s Nepal’s ever-growing capital. Sure, it’s got its problems, like corruption (who doesn’t?), but in every alley you turn in Kathmandu, you’ll find neighborhoods so distinctive, vibrant, and full of life.
The tourists use Thamel as a base to stock up on cheap, second-hand hiking gear before they head to the faraway mountains, but Kathmandu’s local life is found in its historic neighborhoods, like Lalitpur or Boudha. Wherever you go, you’ll find gossip circles forming over plates of momo—Nepali’s beloved dumplings stuffed with meat and vegetables. In recent years, the city has also welcomed a new coffee wave to embrace the country’s organic coffee grown across its mountains and valleys.
Coffee schools are popping up across the city to train enthusiastic, young baristas on their trait while lanes and bylanes are seeing new coffee shops—some lavish, others humble—serving specialty homegrown coffee with their own roasteries. There’s a strong focus on hand-brewing and returning to everything slow and mindful in life.
In this guide, we feature cafes that have pioneered Nepal’s coffee culture, homey hangouts that double as communal spaces, and barista schools.
Kar.ma Coffee
Nearly two decades ago, Austrian Birgit Lienhart-Gyawali arrived in Kathmandu with just a backpack, and then, she decided to build a family here—and serve coffee. What began as selling pour-overs from supermarket-bought coffee to passersby soon evolved into a sustainable brand sourcing handpicked, wet-processed beans directly from Nepali farmers and local cooperatives in rural villages. Kar.ma now has two outlets across the city, and their cafe in Lalitpur—a historic part of the bustling Nepali capital—feels like a warm, cozy hug from a close friend you met after several years.
Concealed in green foliage, the space features rustic, earthy tones. It’s bright and airy with large windows filtering in sunlight, and comfortable seating spots to get some work done. Kar.ma is all about embracing the art of slow living, and it expands into their coffee, perfectly hand-brewed with a moka pot or brewed in a siphon, a French press, or AeroPress. Expect full-bodied single-origin espresso and hand-crafted pour-overs paired with their great selection of pastries and cheesecake.
Kar.ma’s on-site small boutique also stocks a range of handmade artisanal and farm-grown products to help communities nationwide. These include coffee honey, handcrafted dark chocolate flavored with orange and wild timmur (a numbing paper), and high-altitude-grown Arabica.
Himalayan Java
If you ask a Kathmandu local about coffee, Himalayan Java is their most common recommendation. A household name now, the brand began in 1999 as the first specialty coffee shop in Nepal founded by Gagan Pradhan and Anand Gurung. Since then, Himalayan Java has come a long way, with branches now in Seattle and Toronto, and serving in multiple locations across Kathmandu with barista training and baking classes across their institutions in Nepal.
While you would find a Himalayan Java cafe on almost every corner in the city now, their Boudha cafe is perhaps their best one. The industrial ambiance with brick walls and bookshelves slots into the neighborhood’s spiritual vibes, with large windows offering spectacular views of the UNESCO-listed Boudhanath Stupa with its characteristic Buddha eyes-painted gilded tower atop a white dome.
The brand uses—among others—a two-group Nuova Simonelli Appia Life espresso machine and a Eureka 1920 Atom grinder, while pour-overs are handled by a Nuova Simonelli Oscar II Red. Of course, the coffee is top notch as anyone would assume, but it’s the views and their friendly baristas that will make you want to frequent the spot again. If you are meandering around Kathmandu, Himalayan Java’s outlet in Durbar Mall is equally stunning with spacious seating and views of the distant green peaks.
Dhaulagiri
Dhaulagiri—named after the world’s seventh highest mountain peak—began in 2017 as a roaster and a supplying organization providing premium coffee machines to hotels and restaurants across Nepal’s tourism industry. Today, it’s also a cafe with barista training sessions. Dhaulagiri’s coffee shop is relatively new, but it’s already carving out a name in Kathmandu’s coffee scene. And it’s easy to see why: the cafe weaves itself around the ethos of fair trade and sustainability, sourcing high-grade, organically grown Arabica beans from farmers across the Himalayan mountains—like the Dhading District in Nepal—using both washed and naturally processed methods. There’s a selection of hand-brewed specialty espressos and iced lattes, with skilled, passionate baristas who are always up for a quick chat about their drinks.
Your coffee comes with small tasting notes, each highlighting their origin, process, altitude, flavor profile, and complex undertones ranging from fruity to nutty and floral. Every batch is freshly roasted in-house, with a meticulous approach to preserving the rich flavors of locally grown and roasted coffee.
While it might look like an ordinary cafe from the outside, the spot is quite charming with minimalist wooden interiors that blend well with their cozy, blue-themed sofas. Dhaulagiri is also all about fostering community and conversation, with regular cupping and tasting sessions that take place. The nibbles are excellent, too, with pastries and sandwiches as well as a selection of local teas.
Ananda Tree House
Everything about Ananda is quintessentially Nepali.
The cafe’s now washed-out pastel mint walls and glass-paned wooden entrance is flanked by a small but green front garden. Inside are earthy, cooling terracotta-tiled floors. And the space? It just feels like home with colorful, swaying Buddhist prayer flags, dangling houseplants, and floor cushions. Ananda is not your go-to chic, contemporary coffee shop, but a space that strives for everything mellow and peaceful in life. You can get lost in their leafy nooks for hours and hours, read, work, and vibe to the soothing ambient music.
Their organic coffee is outstanding with plant-based milk, like their popular almond or oat milk lattes.
But the main reason to come here—if we are being honest—is their simple but conscious vegetarian and vegan food menu. There are excellent peanut sesame noodles, Tibetan thenthuk (a warm, hand-pulled noodle soup), vegan matcha, and chocolate cakes to pair with coffee—or their wildflower teas sourced from the remote regions.
The coffee shop wears many hats. Part of the cafe is also a homestay, a space for community gatherings, and a boutique selling locally sourced products like honey, woven shawls, ceramics and yak soft toys.
Coffee Beans Specialty Cafe
If you aimlessly stroll through the streets in Boudha, the cultural core of Kathmandu, you’ll pass many Tibetan Buddhist temples with their prayer flags fluttering in the air, and dozens of hole-in-the-walls serving excellent Tibetan cuisine, like laphing, a cold noodle dish made of mung bean starch. If you are in the mood for great coffee, though, head to Coffee Beans Specialty Cafe.
It’s housed on the upper floor of a typical urban shophouse, but the cafe is unassumingly pretty. It’s also always buzzing with barista classes taking place at a small learning room in front of the main cafe. The coffee shop is bright, clean, and contemporary housing a main bar with glossy white brick walls at the back, and their houseplants-adorned seating nooks open up to the main street—snag one of those spots as they are great for people-watching.
Opened in 2017, the cafe offers their own “Coffee Beans Specialty” single-origin blends from a local roaster and serves outstanding naturally anaerobic pour-overs and aeropress brews. Alongside their hand brewed coffee, the baristas also prepare a Mocha Cookie Crumb and a range of iced drinks, like peach and lemon mojitos, teas, and lemonades. The food menu isn’t extensive, but their salami sandwiches and gooey chocolate brownies always taste excellent—or try their refreshing watermelon salad!
Zinara Rathnayake is a freelance journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Read more Zinara Rathnayake on Sprudge.
