Perth’s cafes and bakeries have never been better – here’s 25 of the best

In part one of the inaugural Essential Cafes and Bakeries guide, we celebrate the veteran venues and trailblazers that continue to blaze.From the gym junkies to the surfers to the Crossfitters to the health-conscious accountants to the runners to the lycra cowboys to the FIFO workers that clog up airport passenger drop-offs at dawn, Perth folks are no strangers to an early alarm. Which means that cafes aren’t just part of life in P-Town: they’re a way of life.While there’s a utilitarian quality to the cafe genre, there’s room, like any hospitality venture, for excellence and craft too. Recognising such excellence and craft is the reason behind assembling Good Food’s inaugural Essential Perth Cafes and Bakeries guide: a roll call of 50 essential addresses that define Perth cafe and coffee culture circa 2026. To help everyone digest this hit list, I’ve split the guide into two 25-venue lists, each roughly broken into two main categories. List one drops today (July 24) and consists largely of the veteran venues and trailblazers that continue to blaze. The second list – a snapshot of the vanguard and the ones to watch – hits the streets next Friday (July 31). As well as being published on WAToday and across the Good Food network nationally, each venue will also be highlighted via the Good Food app.While an exercise like this is a fine excuse to drink heaps of batch brew, scoff pies and revisit old favourites, it also doubles as an opportunity to break down local cafe and coffee trends and consider how they help us understand this city, the people in it, and the effect(s) one has on the other. I’ve spent a lot of time studying the organic, single origin tea leaves and this is what they said.Hinata’s brunch set.Jessica ShaverRestaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.Sign upVariety is the spiced latte of life If someone asked me to sum up Perth’s cafe landscape in a single word, I’d choose “diverse”. Compared to the cafe food doing the rounds at the start of the last decade – flat whites and cappuccinos, Eggs Benny and things with goat’s cheese, plus lots of square-shaped plates – modern-day brunching has become infinitely more cosmopolitan, interesting and delicious. Flavours from Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and other Asian nations now represent a bigger slice of the short-order AM cook’s repertoire. Same goes for dishes and spices from North Africa and the Levant. (See also: “Middle Eastern cooking.“) These global influences aren’t just being incorporated into the wider cafe cooking playbook but being celebrated in specialised new venues too. Consider cheery Japanesekissaten Hinata, or the Indonesian breakfast noodle shopBakmi Kochan 88. As a result, the definition of “cafe” has become bigger and looser to reflect the blurring of the lines between restaurant, bar, kiosk, takeaway counter, bakery, kiosk and about a dozen other styles of hospitality venue. (But in the interests of managing expectations, I define a cafe as a casual daytime-mostly restaurant or shop that serves breakfast, lunch or brunch, and predominantly coffee and tea.)The noodles at Bakmi Kochan 88 are made daily - sometimes twice daily.Max VeenhuyzenThe rise of craft bread, bakers and baked goodLike the rest of the world, Perth has witnessed and benefited from the rise of specialistsandwich shops and bakeries over the past decade. The most interesting – places such as Tuart Hill’s glorious retro-leaningStrollio’s Luncheonette or the Highgate instituteChu Bakery for example – are a combination of both. Not that cafes necessarily have to bake their own sourdough, pastries and croissants, especially when one can call on makers such asMary Street Bakery,Big Loaf orCommon Bakery – wholesale bakeries that prove skill and scale can coexist – to supply and deliver them their daily bread. Chu Bakery in Highgate.Perth coffee is about than long macs topped up In addition to better baked goods for all, the rise of new Perth cafe empires – see alsoCommunity Coffee Co and Modus – has also raised coffee standards around town. (Most of the city’s new-wave coffee roasters are side hustles for existing cafes with the move to roasting their owns beans as much about quality control as it is, tedious business talk trigger warning, vertical integration of supply chains and cost control.) While this growing local interest in specialty coffee should be applauded, it’s also worth noting that “specialty coffee” is also on the increase with operators using the s-word willy-nilly in a bid to catch customers’ eyes. (Understandable, perhaps, in such a competitive marketplace.) While there aren’t hard and fast rules on what constitutes specialty, it pays to have your wits about you: keep in mind the parable of the (alleged) “cool” uncle or auntie that constantly has to remind their nieces and nephews of their street-smarts.Modus Coffee in Victoria Park.(Speaking of the current cafe climate, it saddens me to see more places only serving coffee and hot drinks in takeaway cups. I get and appreciate that not paying someone to collect and wash cups helps owners manage wage costs, but it also seems wrong to watch somebody carefully whisk high-end matcha and then pour it into a paper cup. Remember to BYO cup.) Chu Bakery owners Ryan and Seren Chu.Neighbourhood watchAll this change plus the post-COVID shift to neighbourhood living has seen real cafe growth in suburbia. In the past, inner-city suburbs such as Mount Lawley, Nedlands, Subiaco and Northbridge plus the Perth and Fremantle CBDs dominated the good cafe and coffee discussion. Today, most postcodes boast at least one place to score a fried chicken burger, matcha latte or glazed doughnut. Although the majority of these places are pitched at the local community, some such as Willetton’s South African wonderlandKalahari or Wangara’s intriguing Burmese lunch barBlue Box are destination venues worth travelling for.Pastries at Common Bakery.Perth cafes are better and more interesting than everWhen it comes to cafes, West Australians have it good. It’s only when you do something as mildly insane as trying to distil Perth’s vibrant cafe and coffee culture into 50 essential addresses that you really understand just how good we have it, especially in the suburbs. This rising tide plus the nature of lists means that hard decisions have had to be made and that many worthy, deserving neighbourhood cafes didn’t make the cut. If one of those cafes happens to be your local, I say sorry. Please accept these recommendations as part of my apology. I have my fingers crossed that they’ll hip you to some new places you might want to add to your eating and drinking rotation. But more importantly, I hope this list captures the excitement and diversity of Perth’s casual morning food and drink scene. To all those that help this city rise and shine, day in and day out, we salute you. Thanks for making us the best morning versions of ourselves possible.The Essential Cafes and Bakeries of Perth 2026 launches on Friday, July 24. Part two will be published on Friday, July 31. All venues are reviewed anonymously. The best way to experience the guide is the Good Food app, where you can search via a map or collections. It’s available as a standalone subscription. Download it from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.From our partners