DuckRabbit Coffee Brewers

Every filter is brewed to order by hand here. There is no batch tank to pour from, which slows the counter down and is meant to. DuckRabbit Coffee Brewers works as a multi-roaster bar in the middle of Den Haag, buying from several roasters at once instead of running a house roast, so what lands in the cup changes with whoever is on the shelf.

A bar built so you can watch the brew

The room is arranged around a long wooden bar that runs almost the length of one wall, with wood and stone worked through an interior developed with local studio 180 graden zuid. Seats face the street along the window, sit up at the bar itself, and gather at a larger communal table toward the back, just in front of the retail shelving. The layout keeps the barista in view and the process open, which is the point of a small, calm room built for conversation over a cup.

Preparation stays hands-on. Espresso comes off a single-group San Remo YOU, and filter is made cup by cup, usually in a Kalita and sometimes an Aeropress. Skipping batch brew costs speed, but it means each filter is ground and poured fresh for the person who asked for it.

The roasters change, on purpose

That multi-roaster habit is the clearest reason to order filter. Dutch roasters Manhattan and Keen are the regular anchors, with guest coffees from Prolog in Denmark and Caffènation in Belgium arriving alongside them. The list rotates, so asking what is open is part of the order rather than a formality.

Espresso and the flat white are the milk-and-shot baseline, and they are the drinks most often ordered by people passing through the city centre. The filter menu is where the range shows, and it is the reason local specialty drinkers keep the bar in rotation.

Coffee with cake, not a meal

Food is compact and personal. The cakes are home-baked by the owner's partner, and the signature is a Turkish mosaic cake, with a short pastry selection beside it. This is a coffee bar with a cake case rather than a kitchen, so the honest order is coffee and a slice.

The name comes from an 1892 drawing in a German humour magazine, the ambiguous figure that reads as a duck or a rabbit depending on where the eye starts, an idea the house links to Escher. It suits a bar that trades on attention. The strongest first round is a hand-brewed filter from whichever roaster is open, a flat white to compare, and mosaic cake if it is on the counter.