If you’re a food lover, you better know Lyon, France. The gastronomic capital of the world is renowned for its fantastic culinary landscape of bouchons and MOF-run restaurants, its quenelles, pâté en croût, and praline, as well as the Rhône region’s impeccable wines. It hasn’t taken the city long to realize specialty coffee can’t be any more meant-to-be. However, when speaking to Slake’s Head of Coffee and Roasting Adwaith Menon, one thing he touched on was the lack of awareness of Lyon’s coffee scene. He further clarifies that the hollow point is really an understanding of France’s coffee vibrancy in general. “I feel like when I talk to people who are traveling, sometimes they just discover a coffee shop, and they think, ‘Oh, it’s cool that you have good coffee. I only thought Paris had good coffee shops.’ And, it’s not true.”
No, it’s not true. And to prove it, here’s a list of unique coffee experiences to relish in Lyon, which just recently hosted the first-ever edition of the Lyon Coffee Fest. Whether you’re popping over the two hours from Paris for a day trip, or making a culinary pilgrimage to experience Lyon’s food scene, do yourself a favor: acquaint yourself with the impassioned coffee community here. It’s among one of the fastest growing specialty coffee markets in Europe today.
Mokxa
If there’s one brand synonymous with Lyon specialty coffee today, it’s Mokxa. Their company was founded in 2011, and today they operate three cafes as well as a coffee school. This shop in Croix-Rousse, Lyon’s hopping fourth neighborhood, was opened in 2021. Nestled into the walkable boulevard of Rue Victor Fort, this cafe has a secretive nature about it, but the locals know.
Crowned by a paper star lantern, Mokxa offers a menu including black coffees (espresso, filter, etc.), milky drinks, and coffee-adjacent beverages (items like cascara, cold brew, tea, and infusions). Proceeding past the mint green, bean-filled bags exhibited at the front, the length becomes apparent—the Modbar all too fitting—you’ll wind up in a hushed garden with just enough nature and seating to turn a few minutes with a flat white into some kind of personal retreat.
Kiwa Café
“I can’t go so often to Korea, so I made my own Korea in Lyon,” says Kiwa Café CEO Gregory Trouillet. Long captivated by Asian cafe culture, Trouillet and his wife (who is Korean) opened this lovely cafe here in Lyon in 2020. Kiwa means roof, referring more broadly to traditional Korean roof tiles, and he constructed an indoor replica inside a roomy space full of natural light right on the Lyon Confluence river stop.
Using a two-group UNIC espresso machine, Trouillet composes very specific coffee, connecting pistachio, black sesame, and chestnut flavors in recipes that make ready use of house-made creams. Deepening Kiwa’s menu further is their exclusive coffee, a blend of Brazilian and Ethiopian beans, that they developed with French roaster EXTRAIT just for their shop. After trying bingsu, a dessert of shaved ice and various toppings, for the first time in Seol during the “bingsu craze,” Trouillet knew that he wanted to sell it in France. With his specialty bingsu recipe, he ran into a rut with the coffee element. Nothing worked, blended, or complimented sweetness the way he wanted. In the end with EXTRAIT, he found a balance and a little more bitterness that was just right. One taste and you’ll agree.
Erikoffee
There is and will only ever be one Erikoffee—and most appropriately only one Éric. Lucky for the Lyonnaise, it’s right here in the sixth district. Artisan Coffee Roaster and Chocolate Maker Éric Pinson has had a love affair with artisanship for 23 years. During that time, he brought his abundant expertise from the Paris area, opening his chocolate shop and cafe in December 2022. “The story of this store: it’s to honor and reproducing the recipe of my father and my grandfather,” Pinson relays with joyous pride. While his father still works with him, every aspect of the business falls on his shoulders. In the accommodating space, there are few seats, which is an intentional feature: Pinson feels that the responsibility of the artisan is to interact with clients. You’re coaxed around the corner, past the chocolate bars and pre-bagged coffees varying in origin—El Salvadorean from Usulutan, Colombian from Aratoca, Nicaraguan from Nueva Segovia—over to a teeming truffle jewel box and a piped-in, onyx-black Giesen roaster.
Arriving under the suspended prism structure capturing a few hanging pendant lights, Pinson is there ready and willing to tell you about what he’s about to pull off his Victoria Arduino espresso machine or to bypass words and communicate directly with your senses, holding out a bag of freshly roasted beans for you to smell. There’s no getting around it: a cafe done in Pinson’s singular, artisanal way declines aesthetics in favor of authenticity and perfectly tempered quality.
LOUTSA
Everything in the LOUTSA Roaster cafe in the seventh arrondissement was conceived and constructed by Co-Founder and CEO Guillaume Langloy. “Just so you know, this one, I did all the electricity, the plumbing, the wall, we did everything because I want to learn before I can get someone else to do the job… I made the bar. It’s all handmade by me.”
Sipping a freddo cappuccino among the splashes of azure blue, there is certainly a tender undercurrent about the set up, which first opened in 2019. Langloy’s ordering counter hums and whirs opposite a roasting station occupied by a high table, Diedrich roaster, and silver coffee dispensers labeled with their signature flavor halos. Yet, the tenderness is balanced with an undeniable and original seriousness about specialty coffee. Loutsa’s brand now includes eight cafes (three of which are in Paris), but here in Lyon the original location is a place where you can relax with an espresso macchiato prepared on their navy Dalla Corte or settle in with a slow coffee, perhaps their pure origine de saison (their seasonal single-origin). This place is profoundly, quintessentially Lyonnaise, and a must visit while you’re in the city.
MAGMA
There’s a strong New York City influence in this cafe, and that’s not by accident. When asked about their favorite cafes, the list of Co-Founders Bérénice Talarmin and Andrea Rossingnol included a telling note: “STUMPTOWN in New York, for its style.”
The MAGMA project (as they refer to it) opened in June 2023, and was named for coffee’s man parallels with lava’s transformative and kinetic nature. To them, coffee evolves in a similar way, going through various processes and emerging in its final form off their La Marzocco machine or V60, almost as though brought out from Earth and into the hands of delighted customers. They feature a guest roaster every month, everything from the dynamos People Possession and Nomad to the funkiest from Tisserie and KB Coffee Roasters. Often, they discover roasters on Instagram and—after trying some samples and approving—toss them into the rotation. This coffee program enables them to stay true to the MAGMA essence and evolve a menu with new flavors all the time. With the toasted shades of the shattered mosaic floor, you’re free to transform here, with coffee, a Magmola (a drink of chocolate, pepper, vanilla, and cinnamon), or whatever else fits your flow.
Slake
The influence of the New Zealand coffee scene on France is extensive. After a year spent living in NZ, a time when “our morning routine revolved around a flat white,” Slake Founder Robin Perraud returned to France and in 2015 started Slake. His goal was to extend the kind of experiences he’d had there to Lyon, offering specialty coffee, fresh pastries, and all-day food.
10 years later, the shop still chooses a style guided by New Zealand specialty coffee culture. An upgraded La Marzocco Strada anchors the bar here, where customers can order espresso drinks such as a piccolo or flat white (with an assuring “2 shots” noted in italics) or a slow coffee prepared via the standard V60 or Chemex as well as with an AeroPress or Kalita brewer. Decadently patterned in wallpaper and floor tiles, while remaining quirky with a collage of framed vintage photographs and clear fishbowl light fixtures suspending LEGOS and miniatures, Slake remains one of Lyon’s premier specialty coffee bars.
Fika Coffeeshop
The idea for Fika was born in Argentina, where owner Baptiste Miquet discovered coffee while working as a cook in Buenos Aires. Today an influential coffee shop and roaster in Lyon, Fika Roasters has a bustling wholesale business, and you’ll find their coffee served across the city in many coffee shops, restaurants, and bars.
What guides their approach to coffee and design is the idea of fika, what Miquet describes as “the moment to share the coffee, the pastries, all the culture around it.” They offer a range of drinks off their Victoria Arduino Eagle One and roast many coffees varying in origin and taste profiles, Miquet specifying that he courts a kind of floral flavor. With an undeniable approachability, a meeting place among coffee flowers might be just the right synthesis.
Rakwe
If a visit comes down to an hour, minutes, even seconds, you can’t miss out on Rakwé right inside Gare Lyon Part Dieu (one of the main transit hubs). They’re the only specialty coffee operation to secure a cart in an SNCF station, a virtually impossible feat that only Founder Elias Sfeir could engineer. Locate the lime neon moka pot, briefly queue up, and secure a freshly roasted cup of coffee that you can be sure was sourced with careful intent. Thanks to Rakwé’s maneuvering, any trip to Lyon is impossible to waste.
Emily Sujka is a freelance journalist based in Ly0n. Read more Emily Sujka for Sprudge.
