Humpback Whale is a café in the Amalienpassage, the arcade in Maxvorstadt’s university quarter, behind a round porthole door. It is run by a family of coffee lovers with roots in Vietnam, Australia, the Netherlands and Germany, who spent a decade exploring coffee cultures before settling in Munich. The name changes meaning depending on who is asked: friendship, the freedom of a whale crossing the ocean, or the sea air of the town they grew up in.
The bar is run by Lucy, a co-founder and barista, who was Germany’s Cup Tasters Champion in 2025. She chooses every coffee, and every coffee is a single origin, roasted fresh in Munich and named by country, region and producer wherever possible. The menu stays small. It runs from Dung K’No, a honey-processed Catimor from a K’Ho village in Vietnam’s Lam Dong highlands, bought at the farm gate through the processor ACOM, to a geisha from Costa Rica’s West Valley and coffees from Yirgacheffe and Jimma in Ethiopia. The coffees on the bar are sold as beans too, and served in handmade ceramic cups.
Most of the guests are neighbours: students from the university and regulars the team knows by name. The passage is shared with independent shops and galleries, between the university, the Academy of Fine Arts and the museums of the Kunstareal.
Photograph: Humpback Whale Specialty Coffee