Our third full day in Lisbon involved a trek up to visit Igreja da Graça, one of Libson’s oldest churches and convents, which sits atop one of the city’s tallest hills (and, coincidentally, has an extremely nice rooftop terrace for viewing the city). Before heading up there, we stopped for breakfast, settling on a small place we had encountered a few times before: Hello, Kristof.
Hello, Kistrof is a small chain of coffee cafés around Lisbon, with locations São Bento, Bica, and Alfama. We visited what we believe is their original location in the Alfama, right across the street from the Pantheon. It’s an interesting concept, since Hello, Kristof started as more of a magazine stand with coffee (you can still see the occasional sign for “Hello Kristof: Coffee and Magazines”) during the pandemic, but has grown into more of a boutique coffee shop with some lighter breakfast fare. It’s got a bit of competition on that front, the quite good Copenhagen Coffee Lab has a location just a bit up the hill, but the Kristof seems to have a steady stream of customers.
Once inside Hello, Kristof, you can see a few vestiges of the “Coffee and Magazines” formats in that they’ve got a broader range of magazines than most coffee places, but otherwise, this place is very coffee-centric, with two baristas making drinks at a central coffee station (food dishes are prepared in a nearby kitchen).
Throughout our Portugal coastal walk, almost every place we stopped had “coffee”, but it was almost always either your standard espresso from an Illy or Lavazza machine, or sometimes even dubious instant coffee. Don’t get me wrong, a cup of Illy or Lavazza coffee isn’t bad, but it’s also not a really good cup of properly brewed coffee. And that’s the main thing that Hello Kristof had for us, a properly brewed cup of coffee, in fact, a nice pourover. Made from their on-site roasted house blend (you could smell the nice toast-like notes from the roaster), this was a thoroughly good cup of coffee. Carol, in particular, was quite thankful to have a thoroughly enjoyable cup.
Myself, the think I was missing from most of our coastal walk was my own specific coffee addiction, a good cold brew. I adore a properly-made cold brew coffee, in all of its intensely-flavored and often teeth-staining glory. Hello, Kristof not only has a cold brew, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one. I rounded out my nominal breakfast with a house cinnnamon roll from their pastry case, and it was a rather good pastry: bold cinnamon notes, a nice crisp, and the sort of precision spiral that I almost never see back in the states.
Carol, meanwhile, went for one of the daily toast specials, and that’s a place where Hello, Kristof really shined, with a smoked salmon, lemon mousse and zest toast. A good, wheaty bread with a lot of seeds, a nice smooth and only slightly acidic mousse, a generous portion of thin-sliced salmon, and a bunch of greens. Not a bad breakfast at all.
So.. we really liked Hello, Kristof. Some of the best coffee of our trip, friendly staff, and some good light eats. It’s definitely worth checking out any of their locations.
