Toki

A corner coffee bar with a four-person bar built into a window opening, so two people can sit facing each other and actually talk.

Jeff Flink left an advertising job at the end of 2014 and opened Toki in 2015, ninety square metres on a quiet corner of the Haarlemmerbuurt, and it has stayed deliberately small ever since. The layout is the reason to bring someone here: two thin interconnected rooms with big corner windows on both streets, a communal table with benches, stools at the pour-over counter, and a window-shaped opening in the dividing wall with a four-person bar on each side, so you sit opposite your companion rather than beside them. It opens at 8:00 on weekdays and the first hour is genuinely quiet. The kitchen is small but real: banana bread that regularly gets called the best in the city, the Toki Toast with watermelon radish and nagami togarashi, porridge, eggs on sourdough. Two things to know. There are no power sockets, which is a feature if you want a conversation rather than a co-working session. And several published guides still list 07:30 to 18:00 and the old tokiho.amsterdam domain, both of which are out of date.

Weekdays 8:00 to 17:00, weekends from 9:00. No bookings, cards only, no power outlets. Go before nine and take the bar in the wall opening. Their current site is toki-times.com: the old tokiho.amsterdam address now belongs to someone else.