Best Specialty Coffee Shop
1. Broz coffee
Barista and roaster Philipp Brož travels through Ecuador’s coffee-growing regions, selecting beans from Pichincha, Loja and Zamora Chinchipe, then letting their differences show in the cup. Filter coffee is the focus: no milk, no sugar, nowhere to hide. His tiny bar in Las Casas completes a project built around understanding how origin, processing and roast shape what coffee can be.
Fankør takes coffee very seriously. Pablo Mateus and Valeria Ordóñez work directly with Ecuadorian farms and favor light roasts that let the bean show its full complexity. But their chef’s instincts push coffee beyond the cup: into bread, pastry and even savory dishes. Ranked fourth in South America and eleventh worldwide in The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops 2026, Fankør’s reputation now reaches well beyond Ecuador.
Intervalo takes specialty coffee off its pedestal. From its spot in northern Guayaquil, Alejandro Barros and his team pair espresso and filter brews with food that plays freely with local references: pastrami with corn, mustard and panela; Manabí cheese, grilled pineapple, cilantro. Coffee and food follow the same logic here: technique, good product and just enough freedom to keep things from getting too serious.
Coffee Relief connects what happens on the farm with what ends up in the cup. Nardelia Espinoza and her family work with small producers through a model that brings together green-coffee lab work, evaluation, roasting and training. Their Valor en Origen program aims to improve both quality and what growers earn. It’s a whole-chain vision of Ecuadorian coffee that has earned international recognition from Sprudge.
Diego Mejía was among the first to take specialty coffee seriously in Cuenca. At Sinfonía, opened in 2018, much of the focus falls on Azuay’s producers: coffee is roasted weekly, every lot is cupped and extraction is adjusted in search of balance, sweetness and body. Through patient, consistent work, Sinfonía has helped raise the bar for coffee culture in Cuenca.
