This post, featuring AFRIKOA Café, is the eighth in an occasional series about my favorite coffee shops in Joburg. 

I recently wrote a story about AFRIKOA Café — an African chocolate café, champagne bar, and coffee shop — for Lonely Planet Travel News. I want to mention it briefly here too because it’s something really new and different.

AFRIKOA is in the Keyes Art Mile, that super cool art/design/foodie complex in Rosebank. AFRIKOA opened in February and is the now the coolest place there.

Long story short: AFRIKOA is the only chocolate company in South Africa that sources its cocoa beans directly from African farmers (from one specific region in Tanzania) and produces/sells single-origin chocolate that never leaves the Continent. AFRIKOA chocolate is made in Cape Town but the café in Rosebank is its first brick-and-morter shop.

The hot chocolate at AFRIKOA is incredible, as are the chocolate desserts, which were conceived by Belgian pastry chef Laettia Van Waeyenberge. AFRIKOA also serves African coffee, with beans sourced directly from a single coffee estate in Rwanda.

In addition to the chocolate and coffee, AFRIKOA serves fancy French champagne by the bottle only. This is a bit of a departure from the whole single-origin-all-African vibe, which struck me as strange at first.

But this is Joburg, where East meets West and the concept of “Africa” is simultaneously earthy and luxurious. Somehow it all just works.

AFRIKOA Café is hidden away on the first floor of the Trumpet Building in the Keyes Art Mile, one floor down from the Mesh Club. The café itself is tiny but there is also some seating on the balcony across the hall, which is fantastic when the weather is nice.

Follow AFRIKOA Café on Facebook.