Greek Coffee Culture Thrives in Brussels EU Quarter

IN THE QUEUE AT TO MELI, BRUSSELS — It’s the after-lunch coffee rush in the heart of the EU quarter in Brussels and this buzzing café is packed with Eurocrats and lobbyists donning suits in a distinctly limited array of shades of navy blue.

I inch closer to the front of the queue. Amid the murmurs of power plays and EU jargon, a familiar intonation rises as I hear the customer in front of me order coffee.

“Ena freddo espresso,” she says, “sketo.”

Before walking off with her iced sugar-free order, the customer falls into a back-and-forth with the staff. The chitchat has the polite familiarity of old friends bumping into each other while running errands on a Saturday afternoon. Heads preen toward the counter, as several French-speaking suits in the queue appear equal parts impatient and fascinated — perhaps even a bit jealous to not be part of the in-crowd.

I smile to myself, knowing the customer is at home — and so am I. Born and raised in Athens, I feel most comfortable at an establishment where the coffee is iced, the staff is warm and the pastries are savoury.

To Meli opened in 2019 in the heart of the mundane grid of concrete and power that connects the headquarters of the European Commission, Council and Parliament. Its name means “honey.”

Greek coffee houses have quietly conquered the Brussels bubble, offering a daily respite from the hustle and bustle of the corridors of power, beating local Belgian cafés, generic American chains and even the Italian barista masters on their turf.

Many of the cafés driving the Greek coffee coup — beyond To Meli, there’s Papillon, Caffeine and Cherry, to name the most popular ones — were born out of the debt crisis of the 2010s, when the country faced an economic collapse that saw unemployment top 27 percent.

The owners of To Meli originally moved to Belgium in 2013 in search of better opportunities before opening their first location six years later. Many of the staff members similarly arrived in Brussels during the crisis to find jobs. In typical Mediterranean fashion, many were spurred by family or friends who were already working in the cafés.

To Meli’s business has been massively successful, with revenues up almost 300 percent from 2013 to 2024, according to their financial accounts. Their neighbour, the Greek-owned Papillon, has seen its revenue climb by four times, Vassilis Tsourapis, the manager of the café, told POLITICO.

Tsourapis, like many of the staff members, ended up working at Papillon through a family relation. Another waiter at To Meli is the owner’s cousin.

Everything and nothing

Greek coffee culture is fundamentally not about speed, efficiency or even caffeine. Italians famously drink their coffee at the bar, standing up, whether it’s a shot of espresso or the longer milk-laden cappuccino.

In Greece, coffee is a decidedly social affair, perhaps the most intimate activity that involves patronizing an establishment. The act of “going for coffee,” or pame gia kafe, lets you focus on your interlocutor. It can be roughly interpreted as: “Let’s sit for several hours, sipping our freddo and talk about everything and nothing.” It’s the type of conversation that happens once the stresses of work and the city have melted away and your mind stops racing to keep up with your to-do list.

That’s not quite what happens at To Meli on a weekday, but the whiff of that ambience is what attracts the chronically overworked Eurocrats.

The coffee itself reflects this fact. The most popular drinks for warm summer days, freddo espresso and cappuccino, contain two shots of espresso – be warned – shaken, not stirred, over a lot of ice.

Prior to the arrival of espresso in Greece in the 1990s, the most common iced drink was a frappe, made out of instant coffee and shaken with ice and/or milk. The unique feature in all these recipes is that they come with a thick foam on top that generates more coffee as the ice melts away. They are meant to be sipped slowly, not gulped down.

The freddo is so essential to the nostalgic Greek expatriate that even on those miserably damp winter Brussels days, when the sun hasn’t shown itself for weeks, many of us will still go for the iced concoction.

A diaspora story

I have lived outside Greece for 13 years. Everywhere I’ve been, especially when the weather is hot, I always lament the absence of a freddo espresso. Other than two cafés mostly catering to London’s Greek and Cypriot community, the only time I saw a freddo espresso outside of Greece was, quite randomly, in Uluwatu, Bali, circa 2021. I picked up two for myself and made a beeline for the beach.

Little did I know upon moving to Brussels that I was landing in a place where Greek cafés are running a strong coffee game — and giving the Italians a run for their money.

During the week, they are mainly populated by EU workers, journalists and elected officials having meetings at the top of the hour. Over the weekend, the original To Meli branch at the Schuman roundabout presents a curious phenomenon. With the area around the Commission’s Berlaymont emptied of Eurocrats, the café fills up with Greeks and Cypriots leisurely sipping on their drinks. On one particular Sunday, I even saw a Greek Orthodox priest greet a group of men who took a break from their freddos to kiss his hand before buying him some pastries.

“This is a place not just for work meetings; it’s also for friends,” one Cypriot EU official who has lived in Brussels for 10 years told POLITICO. “It’s not a bubble place, it’s a Greek place.”

Many of the European officials POLITICO spoke to on several recent visits to the Greek cafés said they don’t necessarily think of the Greekness of the place, but they do appreciate the quality of the coffee and food, as well as the laid-back vibe.

Italian challenge

The Italians are going strong in the EU quarter. Still among the favorite spots in the Brussels bubble is Caffelatte, an Italian-owned café, which has seen a strong rebound since Covid-19 dented the hospitality sector in 2020.

As the names of Greeks’ favorite modern drinks indicate, there is an Italian connection. The freddo was invented in 1991 by a Greek coffee importer, Kafea Terra, who was trying to figure out a way to sell Italian Illy espresso to the local market in the summer months.

In the EU capital, the upstart Hellenic coffee challenge is undeniable. Once at the office, when I was glorifying the freddo espresso to colleagues, POLITICO’s Italian-born competition policy reporter Francesca Micheletti protested that it is just a “shakerato” marketed as Greek, citing a favorite summer coffee recipe in Italy.

I had spent enough time in Italy to know that it was different, but my journalistic instinct prompted me to investigate the exact shakerato formula.

The Italian invention is always made with sugar and the froth is looser, not thick enough to continue producing more coffee for hours. I told Francesca to give freddo espresso a try and get back to me. She didn’t budge.