Espresine

Kavos Broliai coffee in Žvėrynas

The coffee is the shortest explanation of Espresinė: beans from Kavos Broliai, roasted light and served fresh in a corner of Vilnius, aimed at cups that taste sweet rather than heavy. The selection is seasonal and changes as coffees come and go, so the bar is a moving target rather than a fixed list of origins to memorise.

The café is the public face of a wider coffee operation. Roasting, supply, consulting, tastings and training all sit behind it, along with a coffee archive, which is why the people on the bar can talk about what is in the cup at more length than the size of the room suggests. Espresinė appears in the 2025 European Coffee Trip Awards.

A neighbourhood bar that reads like a living room

Žvėrynas is the point. Espresinė was built to introduce specialty coffee to its own neighbourhood first, and the room follows from that ambition: calm, small, and closer to a community living room than a café, with regulars who treat it accordingly. Coffee is the reason to be there, but nobody is being hurried through it.

Design and jazz are part of the identity rather than decoration, and the name itself is an invented Lithuanian word, coined to express the team's attitude towards specialty coffee. There is an environmental streak too, with the project framed around a conscious relationship to the planet as well as to the cup. What you get is a local coffee bar with more thought behind it than the average corner counter, without any of the ceremony that usually comes attached.

Ask what is on

Order by asking rather than choosing from a list. Seasonal rotation means the interesting answer changes through the year, and the team is glad to explain what has just arrived and how it is being brewed that week.

Expect the light, sweet end of roasting rather than a dark, bitter one, and take the recommendation if one is offered, since it will usually be the newest coffee on the bar. Beans go home from the same counter through the roastery's retail side, and the tastings and training running alongside the café make it easy to take the interest further. This is a coffee bar to return to rather than a one-off stop, which is exactly what a neighbourhood project should be.