The city that never sleeps has a new favorite caffeine cafe.
A coffee shop in NYC’s West Village was just named one of the best in the world according to the newly released World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops list.
Arcane Estate Coffee, a Panama-focused cafe on Cornelia Street, was ranked No. 12 on the list — making it one of nine cafes in the US to make the worldwide list.
The honor is an impressive feat — especially considering they opened their doors just nine months ago.
“We opened nine months ago with the goal of creating a café that could showcase what makes Panamanian coffee remarkable,” the coffee shop wrote of the distinction on Instagram.
The small cafe has built a reputation on its rare coffee beans sourced directly from family farms in the Chiriquí highlands of Panama, a region known for volcanic soil and Geisha varietals.
According to the coffee shop’s website, their founder, Edgar Acosta-Masferrer, realized that his family’s land sat at the center of Panama’s specialty coffee production.
Arcane Estate has a rotating menu of micro-lots that “best express the nuance of the current season,” with a focus on highlighting tradition and giving people access to coffees not regularly consumed.
One person on Instagram even called it “the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. The flavor, preparation, service, equipment… everything.”
Because the coffees are rarities within the harvest, the cafe’s supply is strictly limited. Their limited bag releases often sell out quickly — and some are even capped at just two per customer.
Their profiles are “intentionally light” and developed to preserve the coffee’s inherent expressions.
“We serve coffee from our own farm alongside those from producers who have shaped how we grow, process, and think about coffee over the past decade,” the coffee shop said on Instagram.
“Our approach has always been to make the work that happens on the farm more visible, within a space designed to give guests time to appreciate the details from soil to cup.”
The second annual World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops ranking, released Monday at CoffeeFest Madrid 2026, looked at more than 15,000 coffee shops across the globe.
The evaluation criteria include quality of coffee, barista expertise, customer service, innovation, ambience and atmosphere, sustainability practices, consistency, and food and pastry quality.
Both public opinion and expert evaluations are taken into account in the voting system, with final scores on a weighted system that sees public votes accounting for 30% of the final score, while the expert panel contributes the remaining 70%.
The top spot went to another US-based coffee shop, Onyx Coffee Lab in Arkansas. Tim Windelboe in Norway took second place, followed by Alquimia Coffee in third.
Other USA coffee shops featured on the list are BlendIn Coffee Club in Texas (No. 20), Domestique in Alabama (No. 43), Prevail Coffee in Alabama (No. 66), Push x Pull in Oregon (No. 72), Savaya Coffee Market in Arizona (No. 77), Story and Soil Coffee in Connecticut (No. 86), and Metric in Illinois (No. 95).
The list highlights diverse spots that are growing to become coffee capitals. The United States leads with nine spots, followed by Australia, Peru, Spain, Honduras and Taiwan.
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