One of our team has a deep fondness for pigeons, so this post is dedicated entirely to them — say hello to PicoPico Cafe, a brand-new (not even a month old) café on Ráday Street, where you can stop by in the morning for a coffee and return in the evening for a glass of natural wine.
The space is minimal, dressed in red tones and dotted with pigeon imagery — greeting visitors from the windows and, as it turns out, from the takeaway cups too. We visited in the very first week after opening and couldn’t quite figure out what pigeons had to do with the name or the concept. Then the city portals started writing about PicoPico, and the mystery was finally solved. The name comes from piccolo — that small but punchy milk-based ristretto drink — which the owners shortened to pico and then doubled up for good measure. The pigeons on the logo still throw you off at first, as if PicoPico were imitating bird-speak, but the owners have a simpler explanation: we’re in Pest, after all, and pigeons are simply inevitable.
On the coffee front, dark roast is handled by Brazilian beans from Bagira, light roast by Seville’s Ineffable, and for those avoiding caffeine there’s a solid decaf selection from D stands for decaf. The summer menu also looks promising: cold brew with orange, espresso tonic, espresso sunrise, and cold matcha. We ordered the cold brew and the espresso sunrise — both hit the spot, the coffee flavour holds its own against the extras, and the orange genuinely comes through.
Food right now is limited to pastries brought in fresh each morning from Lui bakery, but a full breakfast menu is planned for autumn. Further down the line the owners want to run wine tastings; for now you can buy bottles from Hungarian, Austrian, German and French producers. The full evening programme at PicoPico still seems to be warming up. We’ll be watching to see how things develop — and we’re rooting for them (pigeons and plug sockets at every table!) — so go check it out.
