Garage Cafe Kiseleff

Garage Cafe opened on July 1, 2016 inside an actual former interwar garage next to Parcul Kiseleff, a building the owners kept intentionally unpolished rather than gutting it into a generic cafe fit out, keeping the original garage doors and structure as the reason the place feels different from anywhere else nearby. Three years after opening, the shop built out its own roasting operation, Garage Roastery, and now sells single origin bags by the producer, with tasting cards on the hopper spelling out origin, altitude, process, and flavor notes for whatever is currently on grind, Ethiopia Guji Mudole with notes of peach, dark chocolate, and passionfruit at the time of writing.

The shop calls itself the first cafe in Romania built inside a garage, and the neighborhood has embraced that origin story, regulars and staff alike describe it as a genuine community hub rather than a passthrough coffee stop, with a small terrace, wifi, and space enough to settle in with a laptop. Dogs are a regular sight at the outdoor tables.