Though it may be easy to pop into that large chain coffee shop on your way to work each morning, where’s the fun in that? Philadelphia is home to a wide variety of great independent coffee houses with a much more personality, and these are just a few.

La Colombe Coffee
The thought process behind La Colombe Coffee is that if you remove the food menu, the merchandise and the other unnecessary features, the coffee will have to speak for itself. That’s exactly what the founders did with their Rittenhouse Square and Dilworth Plaza locations, and the results are beautifully minimal coffee shops that brew fair-trade classic and reserve coffee blends from around the world.

One Shot Coffee & Cafe
Located on the corner of George and American Streets, One Shot is a warm, eclectic coffee house furnished with rustic wood, vintage furniture and bookshelves from floor to ceiling. The cafe proudly brews Portland’s Stumptown Coffee, which has been hailed as the best coffee in the world by numerous media sources, as well as pour-overs from local roasters ReAnimator and Rival Bros Coffee.

Old City Coffee
Old City Coffee brews only high-grown Arabica beans in very small batches, and the prices are kept extremely low by not using a commercial roaster. The cafe is traditionally furnished with wooden tables and bright pops of red, and true to coffee house form, there are often live music performances in the evenings.

CC-BY-2.0/Flickr/Pen Waggener