The cafés in Bangkok don’t just sell coffee. They sell vibes.
You can call them Instagram cafés, but I’d argue that they’d still thrive in a world without Instagram or any social media. In fact, they’d probably thrive even in a world without coffee.
I like to call these places vibe merchants — novel and aesthetic spaces that invite you to immerse in them. The cafés differentiate themselves based on the vibes they emit, and not necessarily the beverages they produce. They come in many forms: some come with an art gallery attached, some feel like the art itself; some are minimalistic, some are confusingly extra.
There are so many cafés in Bangkok that it’s frankly perplexing how they all stay open. Most of the cafés were near empty when I visited that it made me wonder if opening a café was some kind of money laundering scheme. There cannot possibly be enough people in this developing city willing to pay 3–5 dollars for a cup of coffee? And even if there were, surely they wouldn’t drink more than a cup a day? And even if they did, why do they need to be all so vibe-y?
But I’m all for it. I spent a bit more than a week in Bangkok visiting cafés, and it made me jealous how NYC didn’t have this kind of café culture. Below are some of the ones that stood out. I am by no means a coffee connoisseur, but it was never about the coffee anyway.
Qilin
Qilin feels like you’re stepping into the abandoned mansion of a 1920’s era Chinese tycoon. It’s decorated maximally with Chinese antiques throughout its three floors, with an oddly fitting mix of Western elements and taxidermied birds too.
Qilin doesn’t feel like a café at all, in fact most of the tables have too much decoration on it — from mahjong sets to full sets of fine China — to be usable. It felt somewhere between a movie set prop room and an instagram trap. Maybe it is a trap; the drinks are terrible, they’re from syrup and have no substance.
The only explanation I have for why this place exists is that maybe the owner just needed a place to store his extensive antique collection, and maybe also launder some money too.
VOIDBKK
VOIDBKK is an abstract space; it gave me a slightly uncomfortable and eerie feeling that no café has ever done before. For that reason it was my probably favorite café on the list.
The ceilings are almost uncomfortably low. The lighting is muted, with no lights and only one tinted window that blurs out the outside world. Most notably, there’s an unsettlingly huge ellipse in the center, with the seating arranged around it.
This ellipse defines the entire space, with a gravity that creates a sense of uneasiness. No matter where you are, you’re aware of its presence.
% Arabica Empire Tower
This is the coolest % Arabica I’ve been to, though the ones in Kyoto come close. It’s on the 55th floor with front-and-center views of the unconventionally shaped Mahanakhon tower, the tallest building in Thailand. As with all % Arabica’s, it has a clean white aesthetic that I’m a fan of.
And of course the coffee is good — it’s % Arabica.
Bonus: the % Arabica in Icon Siam is worth a visit too.
CONVO BKK
The only reason we’re talking about this cafe is because there’s a very large egg on the second floor. It’s taller than human height and just sits there upright on a bedding of hay. It’s painted like a quail egg, and is oddly just a bit too elongated. Whatever the reason is for this egg, I reckon they’ve been successful at accomplishing it.
Convo is divided into 3 concepts across its 3 floors. The first floor is a coffee shop, the second a fashion boutique, and the third a rotating art space.
The house namesake drink is an espresso with coconut water and coconut cream foam. It’s good, especially with the coconut foam on top.
Ayatana Charoenkrung
The most remarkable thing about this café is that there is a huge plaster sculpture of a hand letting go of a balloon. The hand is about human height, while the balloon hangs from the ceiling, barely escaping the hand. There is no description for this piece of art, nor apparent reasoning for why it exists. On the base of the hand there is an pointlessly inspirational quote, “LET GO AND BE FREE”; a simple plaque on the back wall says “YOU WILL BE FREE WHEN YOU LET GO”. It’s fun (and pointless) to ponder what this all means over a cup of coffee.
This cafe has some of the best pastries I’ve had – the mango sticky rice tart was phenomenal.
Bonus: after you order they give you a coin representing 1 Baht to donate to one of six causes — the visually impaired, heart disease patients, and others. It’s a good touch to make you feel like you’re doing good while picking the cause you cared most about.
ve/la at Mediums Sukhumvit 42
This café is in the back of a high-end art supplies store. Upstairs, there’s also a kitchenware shop selling products that all look like they came from Muji.
ve/la has a clean and white aesthetic like % Arabica, but here there are no windows and instead an inexplicable tree branch sticking out of the wall that really defines the space. It’s strikingly effective.
Bonus: there’s a cool dessert that looks like paint palette that I didn’t get to try.
Rolling Roasters — Ekamai
This spacious cafe revolves around a circular bar before extending the curve upstairs, where you can observe the baristas working from above. It feels like everything is intentionally rounded here — from the curved display cases with a focus on roll cakes to the circular chairs upstairs.
They also had one of my favorite cappuccinos in Bangkok.
MTCH
A clean and minimalistic cafe dedicated to quality matcha. MTCH is by no means a traditional matcha tea house that hosts tea ceremonies or tastings for different types of matcha; instead it projects the modern yet zen lifestyle of a “sophisticated matcha drinker”.
MTCH is serious about its matcha — there’s a matcha mill running when you walk in. They weigh both the water and the matcha before whisking, and serve the drink in a pre-chilled cup.
Side note, I only realized after I had left that MTCH was MATCHA without the A’s.
Ksana
Another cafe dedicated to matcha, but it also feels like a liminal cave with completely white and protruding walls. It’s a blissfully tranquil space steps away from Sukhumvit, probably the busiest street in Bangkok.
Resonance Read Room (formerly known as Vahap Coffee)
A barely repurposed space, obscurely located on the third floor of a side street in Chinatown. There is something fundamentally yet inexplicably artsy about a lofty space with mismatched chairs and tables just plopped there.
Since I visited it has now become a reading room with mostly coffee table books that don’t have many words nor ideas. Come to think of it, it’d make a great space to read with all the natural light coming in. There’s also some amazing views of a near by temple.
