Specialty coffee in Bulgaria

Specialty coffee in Bulgaria began with Dabov Specialty Coffee, opened in Sofia in 2008 and widely regarded as the country's first third-wave café. Bulgarians traditionally drank dark, bitter espresso or coffee brewed in an ibrik or moka pot with sugar, a taste shaped partly by cheap robusta imports in the socialist era. Jordan Dabov and Vesela Vasileva opened Dabov as a husband-and-wife roastery-café; Jordan Dabov became an SCA barista trainer and Cup of Excellence judge. A second wave of Sofia cafés followed from 2014, and the country's largest commercial roaster, Balkam Group, launched a specialty brand of its own.

Sofia holds most of the country's specialty cafés and roasters. Plovdiv has a smaller scene with a roaster, and Varna and Burgas on the Black Sea coast have a handful of cafés each. Beyond these, specialty coffee appears in ones and twos in Stara Zagora, Bansko, Veliko Tarnovo, Blagoevgrad, Kazanlak, Kyustendil and Ruse.

Roasters that shape Bulgarian specialty coffee include DABOV Specialty Coffee, Martines Specialty Coffee Shop & Roastery and SNACK! Coffee Roasters in Sofia, and Kometa. Dabov's coffee also turns up abroad, for example at Frut'za in Tirana. Expect espresso and filter at the specialty bars, with ibrik coffee still part of everyday life around them.