Coffee culture has been on the rise in Minsk lately, as the city is booming with coffee places of all kinds. Some of them are fancy, where you can sip your drink and sit with a laptop for a few hours, others are an okay choice when you’re in need for a quick take-away cappuccino on your way to work. But there are also places where the brewing has been taken to a new level.

Welcome to Seadog & Friends. It’s a small specialty coffee shop in the Victory Square area. The place is a bit hard to spot from the noisy Kozlova street, but as you turn to the quiet Zolotaya Horka street, look up for a white square sign with blue-green letters. It’s not big, it’s the size of a room, it’s usually crowded but it doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable. It’s cosy and photogenic, with beautiful drawings of cute sea dogs on the walls.

The baristas, who are always nice to have a little chat with, are the multiple prize winners of the various coffee brewing competitions that regularly take place in Minsk. The guys are real Jedis who treat coffee not as just a hot wake-me-up beverage but as a drink with a wide range of tastes that you can explore and enjoy.

My favourite here is the flat white: perfectly balanced as all things should be. Order it and start exploring the Minsk coffee culture here!