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Fitzroy takes its coffee seriously, and this guide ranks the suburb's cafes and roasters by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. Some are specialty roasters, some are all-day kitchens where the coffee shares the table with a big plate, and the order reflects the rooms Fitzroy locals actually name. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is ARRA Coffee/Wine, the coffee and wine room reviewers rate for the cup and a pastry, the coffee beside a baklava croissant, a chilli scrambled croissant, a tamagoyaki bun, a tuna melt toastie and mushroom toast with ajvar sauce. Calere Coffee follows, the cafe reviewers come to for the playful drinks and the baking, the Jelly Tutu of Yunnan coffee jelly and Earl Grey milk foam and a Big White Rabbit single origin beside a matcha roll cake, a rose lychee roll cake and a Raspberry Candy piccolo.
GABRIEL FITZROY is the room reviewers rate for a brunch plate with the coffee, the Delhi rosti and a chilli scramble beside a pastrami toastie, a bacon bap and mango pudding. Burnside is the cafe reviewers come to for the coffee. Jasper Coffee is the roaster reviewers rate for the single origin, the single-origin espresso and a specialty filter beside a flat white, a mocha with honey and specialty cakes and pastries.
Sunrise Cafe is the room reviewers come to for the coffee. Padre Coffee at St David Dairy - Fitzroy is the roaster cafe reviewers rate for the pour-over, the Wush wush pour-over and a flat white on St David Dairy milk beside a rotating single origin espresso, pea and lemon toasties, granola and Via Porta pastries. Toby's Estate Coffee Roasters Melbourne is the roaster reviewers come to for the blend and a bagel, the Woolloomooloo-blend flat white and a single-origin filter beside a cold brew and cucumber and hummus or mushroom and kale bagels.
The list closes across the suburb. Thieves Coffee is the room reviewers rate for the oat flat white and the filter, the oat milk flat white and rotating filter coffees beside banana bread and a decaf cold brew. Min Lokal Cafe is the cafe reviewers come to for a brunch plate, the Min Chilli Soldiers and a croissant French toast beside a BLT and smashed avocado toast. Bell Street Coffee Window is the coffee window reviewers rate for the cup and the baking, the flat white, long black and an almond latte beside cinnamon scrolls, Danish pastries and fresh chicken sandwiches. And Midori Matcha rounds it out, the matcha room reviewers come to for the matcha range, the vanilla cold foam matcha and a salted maple matcha beside a banana cream matcha and an oat matcha.
If the cup is the thread you want to pull, follow it across the city. There is a guide to the best coffee in Melbourne for the citywide picture, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in Fitzroy for where to eat once the coffee is done.
Every cafe here carries a Curateria Score built from its full review history, then weighted toward its most recent hundred reviews so the order reflects the room as it runs today, not as it ran two years ago. We hold the cohort to this one suburb and a tight inner-Melbourne radius, roughly 15km of the city, and we drop the multi-location chains and national franchises that trade on a logo more than a local following, so what is left reads as the genuine local order. Because a long-running room collects more reviews than a newcomer, we shrink the raw average toward the cohort mean for places with thin review counts, so a handful of glowing reviews cannot leapfrog a room a thousand diners have judged. For a coffee page the category gate keeps the cohort to cafes and roasters, so a restaurant that happens to serve a good flat white does not crowd out the rooms Fitzroy goes to for the coffee itself. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.
Explore more Coffee in Fitzroy across Melbourne on Discover ->
Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.
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