Tirana’s specialty coffee scene is having a moment. And honestly, it’s been a long time coming.
If you’ve wandered through the city lately, you’ve probably noticed something shifting. The classic espresso bars are still there, doing what they’ve always done, and we love them for it. But there’s a new kind of curiosity in the air. People are asking questions they didn’t used to ask – where are these beans from? What am I actually tasting? Why does this cup feel so different from the one I had yesterday?
That curiosity is exactly what The Back Room was built for.
A Little Something You Might Not Know About Your Morning Coffee
Here’s something interesting: the coffee in most cups you’ll drink today was grown at altitude, harvested by hand, and processed on a farm where the people picking the cherries know each tree individually. By the time it reaches a generic commercial roaster, though, most of that story gets blended away – mixed with beans from a dozen other farms to hit a consistent, predictable flavor that’s designed not to surprise you.
Specialty coffee does the opposite. It protects that story.
At The Back Room, we source our beans from The Barn Berlin, a roastery that has been operating since 2010 and is considered one of the finest in Europe. Every single coffee they produce comes from one farm, one harvest. The Barn treats their coffee farms the way a winemaker treats a vineyard – with the understanding that great flavor starts in the soil, not in the roaster. They roast light and clean, which means what you taste in your cup is the coffee itself: the land, the climate, the care of the people who grew it. Not the roast.
If the most interesting thing you’ve ever tasted in a cup of coffee was bitterness, a well-pulled flat white from a Barn bean might genuinely change your morning.
Matcha in Tirana: Why It’s Here and Why It’s Not Going Anywhere
Matcha has been making its way across European specialty coffee menus for the past couple of years, and it’s arrived in Tirana too. But before you write it off as a trend, there’s a reason it keeps sticking around.
Here’s the interesting part: matcha contains an amino acid called L-theanine, which works alongside caffeine in a way that coffee alone can’t replicate. Instead of the sharp spike and the familiar mid-afternoon slump, you get something steadier. A cleaner kind of alert. It’s why monks in Japan have been drinking it before meditation for centuries – it wakes the mind without unsettling it.
At The Back Room, the matcha cold foam is made with ceremonial-grade matcha, which is the grade produced for drinking (as opposed to culinary-grade, which is made for baking and cooking). It’s whisked into cold foam and layered over iced milk, creating something that looks as good as it tastes. The foam carries the grassy, gently sweet character of the matcha while the drink underneath stays cold and clean.
It’s the kind of thing you try once to see what the fuss is about, and then find yourself thinking about on a Tuesday.
If you’ve been looking for matcha in Tirana that’s been made with the same care as the coffee next to it on the menu, this is where to come.
The Desserts: Small Menu, No Fillers
We’ve kept the dessert menu short on purpose. Not because we ran out of ideas, but because everything on it needs to earn its place. A great coffee experience doesn’t need twenty options behind glass. It needs a few things that genuinely belong alongside what’s in your cup.
- Vegan Loaf – dense, properly moist, and satisfying in the way that only something made without shortcuts can be. No dairy, no compromise on texture. It works beautifully with a morning cortado or a slow afternoon filter coffee. If you assumed vegan meant dry and dutiful, this one will change your mind.
- Cheesecake – set the way cheesecake should be, rich without being heavy. Pair it with one of the brighter, fruit-forward single origins from The Barn and something quietly wonderful happens. The acidity in the coffee lifts the creaminess of the cheesecake in a way that makes both taste better than they would alone.
- Cookies – baked with some substance to them. Not the thin kind that disappears in one bite. These have weight, and they’re especially good alongside the matcha cold foam if you want something to reach for while you sit.
None of it is there to fill a display case. It’s there because it belongs.
Why The Back Room?
Tirana has plenty of places to get coffee. What it has less of is places where someone has thought carefully about every part of what ends up in front of you – the origin of the bean, the way it was roasted, the grade of the matcha, the texture of the dessert next to your cup.
The Back Room is a small space with a clear point of view. We work with The Barn Berlin because their beans are among the best you can find in Europe. We serve matcha cold foam because it’s genuinely good and because it fits. We keep things simple because a few excellent things, done with care, will always beat a long list of average ones.
Whether you’ve been a specialty coffee drinker for years or you’ve never thought much about where your coffee comes from, there’s something here for you. And if you end up staying longer than you planned, well – that tends to happen.