Even in a city like Prague, with its excellent speciality coffee scene, it’s rare to find top quality coffee in the tourist-centric heart of the city. Fortunately, Pauseteria is an exception to this rule, located right in the heart of Prague’s old city, making it a near-essential stop for any coffee lover doing the usual tourist sights. Opening in April 2018, Pauseteria occupies a large, vaulted central room, with a smaller room off to each side.

In keeping with a typical Czech café, there’s full table service (and very attentive it is too), along with an interesting, all-day breakfast/brunch menu, backed up with a wide range of cakes, baked fresh every day. Naturally, there’s a small selection of beer and wine, along with soft drinks and tea. And then, of course, there’s the coffee, drawn from a regularly-rotating group of Czech roasters, with two options on espresso and another on filter, available as either batch brew or through the V60.

Amanda and I liked Pauseteria so much that we visited twice, once for breakfast on a busy Sunday morning, Amanda’s first full day in Prague, and again for coffee and cake on Friday afternoon, our final day in the city.

You can read more of my thoughts after the gallery.

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Pauseteria is on Ulice Radnice (Town Hall Street), just to the west of Prague’s Old Town Square, at the back of the town hall, in fact. Tucked away behind a broad, vaulted walkway, which provides plenty of shelter from the weather, it’s not that obvious from the street, a situation made more pronounced by the tall, metal barriers erected the week before our visit. With luck, they’ve long since vanished!

Pauseteria occupies three of the broad vaults, each with two tall, arched windows. The entrance is in the centre, the door inset in left-hand side of the window in left-hand arch, opening onto a long, thin main space, maybe four times as deep as it is wide. A 16-person communal table occupies the centre, with a three-person bar tucked into an alcove in the right-hand wall, while a pair of two-person tables face a bench-seat in the right-hand window.

The counter’s at the back, drinks menu on the wall behind it, but since Pauseteria offers full table service, there’s no need to go back here, except to check out the cakes or retail coffee offering. Oh, and to pay before you leave, naturally.

This main space can get quite noisy, so you may want to try one of the two side rooms, accessed through open archways at the front of each wall. The larger of the two is on the left, with two windows at the front, both occupied by bench-seats. The first window has a pair of small, round coffee tables and an armchair, while the second window has a four-person table. Meanwhile, at the back, opposite second window, is a row of three, two-person tables along a padded bench-seat. There’s also access to the kitchen through a door at far end.

The room to the right is much smaller, with just a single window at the front. This has another bench-seat, two small coffee tables and an armchair. Another padded bench-seat runs along the right-hand wall with a pair of two-person square tables. Finally, there’s an armchair in a niche at the back, while access to the toilets (shared with the restaurant next door, a sister-business to Pauseteria) is via an opening in the right-hand wall at the front.

Turning to the coffee, Pauseteria had two single-origins from Candy Cane on espresso, a Peruvian for black drinks and an Ethiopian for milk-based drinks, all the shots pulled on a three-group Black Eagle. These were joined by an Ethiopian heirloom varietal grown in Brazil on filter (also by Candy Cane).

Our first visit was for breakfast, with Amanda ordering an excellent cheese and spinach omelette, served with some lovely bread, while I had the Eggs Benedict (but without the bacon), although it came with cloud eggs (whipped egg white with the yoke placed back in the middle). They were fine, but I prefer normal poached eggs.

We both had flat whites to go with our breakfasts, the milk and coffee going very well together and while Amanda had another on our return, I tried the Ethiopian single-origin as an espresso, which was gorgeous, a complex, full-bodied coffee with floral notes.

We shared an excellent warm, vegan cinnamon and pecan roll, while Amanda had an equally good chocolate and raspberry mouse with a chocolate sponge base and I had a Bundt cake, with chocolate centre and a plain outer ring.

Finally, we shared a batch brew, served in a flask with the cup on the side. This too had great body, with a rich taste and plenty of complex florals, a perfect way to end our stay in Prague.

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