Best Cafes in Broome: Where to Eat, Drink and Slow Down in the Kimberley Gateway

Good Cartel is the place Broome residents send visitors when they ask where to get a real coffee — a specialty roaster and cafe on the Chinatown strip that takes its beans seriously in a town where that distinction still matters. The setting is a shaded heritage streetscape, the coffee is single-origin and handled with care, and the brunch menu leans into the kind of seasonal, local-produce cooking that you wouldn't expect quite this far north. It's become the morning anchor for the contingent of remote workers, digital nomads and extended-stay visitors who have made Broome home for a dry-season stint.

The vibe is relaxed rather than precious about it — a specialty cafe with a regional backbone, not a laneway Melbourne exercise in extraction theatre. The outdoor seating and the heritage Chinatown building do the atmospheric work; the coffee does the rest. It's at its best in the cool Dry season mornings before ten, when you can sit outside in genuine comfort with a book or a laptop and a cortado before the day heats up. Weekend brunch hours draw a queue on peak-season weekends, but the line moves.

It suits solo travellers and couples looking for a quality morning; remote workers who want WiFi and a cup worth drinking; and anyone who finds "cafe first, then beach" the right sequence for a Dry season day. The honest note: hours shift between season and not all opening times are current on third-party sites — check the current socials before you arrive at 7am.

Matso's is Broome's most distinctive drinking experience — a craft brewery housed in a beautifully weathered heritage tin-shed building beside the mangroves near Town Beach, serving its own WA craft beers including the famous Broome Mango Beer and a Ginger Beer that's become a Kimberley staple. The setting is quintessentially Broome: corrugated iron walls, ceiling fans turning slowly, open sides funnelling whatever sea breeze there is, and a beer garden that looks out toward the mangroves as the afternoon light softens. It's the kind of bar a town builds once and spends fifty years being grateful for.

The food menu runs to sharing plates, bar snacks and mains with a tropical WA sensibility — barramundi, Asian-inflected dishes, the kind of generous portions that make sense after a day walking red-cliff coastlines. The Mango Beer divides opinion (sweetly tropical or one-dimensionally sweet, depending on who you ask), but the core lager and pale ale are well-made and cold, which is the more important quality in this latitude. The sunset drinks hour, when the building catches the fading light and the crowd gathers for the evening, is when Matso's is at its best.

It suits almost everyone — couples unwinding after a Cable Beach afternoon, groups settling in for a long evening, families who want food and a beer garden with space for kids to move, and solo travellers who find a bar stool at Matso's the best place in town to meet people. The caveat: it gets packed on Dry season weekends and during festivals; a weekday afternoon is the quieter version of the same experience.

The Aarli is Broome's answer to a proper tropical bar-and-restaurant: a licensed venue on Hamersley Street built for the long, shade-seeking Dry season afternoon, with a menu of share plates and mains that leans harder into local seafood and Asian-influenced cooking than most places in town. The barramundi and the prawn dishes consistently rate as the best versions in Broome, the cocktail list is genuinely considered, and the room — open-sided, shaded, moving air — does exactly what a building in this latitude should do.

It's the right call when you want something that sits between a casual lunch and a proper dinner: generous share plates, cold drinks, no fuss about how long you stay. The Asian-Kimberley fusion dishes reflect Broome's pearling-era history — the same multicultural mix that brought Japanese, Malay and Chinese workers to the coast in the late 1800s still runs through the town's food culture in subtle ways, and The Aarli honours it without being self-conscious about it.

It suits couples and small groups who want quality food with a drink in a genuinely tropical setting, and solo travellers who'd rather eat well at a bar stool than navigate a dinner reservation alone. The honest notes: it's not primarily a coffee spot (go to Good Cartel for that), and busy Friday and Saturday evenings in peak Dry season can mean a wait for a table — plan accordingly.

There is no more convenient cafe in Broome than the Cable Beach General Store — positioned at the north end of the Cable Beach car park, it is the last stop between town and the sand, and the obvious choice for a pre-swim coffee, a post-swim smoothie, or a cold drink before the camel trek. It is not a destination cafe in the Good Cartel sense; it is the perfectly placed enabler of a Cable Beach morning — the place you stop because you can walk to the water in three minutes and because cold drinks at Cable Beach prices are easier than they have any right to be.

The smoothies and fresh juices are the headline: tropical, cold and made properly, exactly what the Broome heat calls for. The coffee is reliable enough for the walk to the beach. The general store section sells sunscreen, snacks, beach gear and the essentials for anyone who left the accommodation without them. It opens early enough to be your first stop before a sunrise walk along the twenty-two kilometres of Cable Beach, and stays open late enough for the post-sunset retreat.

It suits families heading to the beach for the day, couples grabbing coffee before an early walk, and anyone who needs to be operational quickly before the sun gets serious. The honest caveat: it is a tourist-location cafe rather than a specialty roaster, and the queues on busy peak-season mornings can be long. Come before 8am or after 10am to skip them.

While Cable Beach draws the crowds, Town Beach — Broome's bay-facing local beach on Roebuck Bay — is where residents go for their morning coffee without the tourist volume. The Town Beach Cafe sits right on the foreshore, with views across the bay toward the tidal flats where the Staircase to the Moon forms on full-moon evenings from March to October. It's a simpler, more relaxed cafe than the Chinatown options — the menu is straightforward, the setting is all outdoors, and the value is strong — and it earns its place on this list because of the location and the crowd it draws: local families, regulars, and people who've discovered that Broome is better understood from Town Beach than Cable Beach.

The cafe also operates as a viewing platform of sorts for Broome's most unusual natural spectacle: the Staircase to the Moon, which occurs on the three nights around the full moon when the rising moon reflects on the exposed tidal mudflats at extreme low tide, creating an optical illusion of a golden staircase climbing from the sea. The Town Beach foreshore is one of the prime viewing spots, and the cafe and the markets set up here on Staircase evenings from March to October make for an easy, atmospheric evening out.

It suits families wanting a relaxed beach breakfast away from the peak-season Cable Beach chaos, couples who'd rather a local's spot than a resort cafe, and anyone staying downtown who wants the bay view with their morning coffee. Note: swimming is not recommended at Town Beach due to crocs, stingers and the tidal flats — this is a walking-and-viewing beach rather than a swimming one.

Zookeepers Store occupies the niche between a retail shop and a cafe that Chinatown does well — a boutique space with coffee and light food, stocking a curated mix of gifts, homewares and local product alongside a coffee bar that produces a genuinely good cup. It's quieter than Good Cartel on a busy weekend morning and has the browseable quality of a place that repays a slow visit — a browse through the shelves between courses, a coffee on the way out, a purchase you didn't expect to make.

The appeal is partly the experience and partly the setting: the Chinatown heritage streetscape through the window, the ceiling fans, the sense that the place has earned its spot by being good at several things rather than trying too hard at any one. It's a shop where you can also eat, or a cafe where you can also shop, depending on your mood — and in a town that gets full of visitors in Dry season, the combination of retail and coffee makes it one of the less-crowded places to spend a morning hour.

It suits couples on a slow browse-and-coffee morning, solo travellers who want to pick up something thoughtfully local, and anyone who needs a mid-morning break between the early walk and lunch. The honest caveat: like all Broome cafes, hours contract in the Wet season and are not always reflected on Google Maps — check the current socials before building a morning around it.

Cable Beach Club Resort's Bay Club is Broome's most reliably beautiful spot for a sunset drink — a resort bar and outdoor lawn with one of the better aspects in town, positioned to catch the last hour of light over the Cable Beach atmosphere. It is not cheap, and the restaurant-level prices are resort prices, but a single sundowner on the lawn as the sky turns from blue to gold to red over the Indian Ocean is one of Broome's signature experiences and costs about what a cocktail costs anywhere in the country.

The resort itself is the original luxury property in Broome — white bungalows, ceiling fans, tropical gardens — and the Bay Club sits at its centre. Non-guests are welcome for drinks and dining, which makes it accessible to anyone staying elsewhere in town who wants one good-setting evening out. It's the obvious choice for the sit-down sunset occasion: an anniversary dinner, the one night you want a proper table and a proper wine list in a setting that matches the occasion.

It suits couples looking for the romantic, well-presented version of a Cable Beach sunset, and groups celebrating something worth marking. The honest caveat: resort prices are resort prices, and it books out on peak Dry season evenings — reserve well ahead for dinner, and arrive by late afternoon if you want a walk-in drink on the lawn at sunset.