In Short
A visit to Café Canale in Winterhude is an experience you won’t soon forget. This charming café has a unique concept: it offers a boat drive-in service where you can order and collect your treats directly from the water. Simply rent a pedal boat, canoe, SUP or similar and off you go!
Great Concept and Location
The café is located directly on the Mühlenkamp Canal, which provides the perfect backdrop for a relaxed boat trip. You can either take a seat in the small café and watch the hustle and bustle at the ordering window, or order from the boat at the window yourself. You can also watch the window with the boat queue from the nearby bridge.
Our Food & Drinks
The menu at Café Canale offers a good selection of snacks and drinks, ideal for a short break on the water. We opted for the chocolate chip cake (€3.80), a hot dog (€5.30), homemade potato salad with sausages (€6.50), an iced chocolate (€4.90) and an iced coffee (€4.90). The prices are reasonable and okay by Hamburg standards.
Checking for more great spots close by? Check out: Trucys Café, Prinzessin Eisbär und SVAADish!
Was it Good?
The quality of the food and drinks is solid, but of course you shouldn’t expect gourmet cuisine. The homemade potato salad was tasty, although it had quite a lot of sauce. The hot dog was simple but tasty. Only the chocolate chip cake was a little too sweet for our taste. The two iced drinks, iced chocolate and iced coffee, tasted good, but had the problem that they were still quite warm, as a scoop of vanilla ice cream was simply added to the hot drinks.
Service
Unfortunately, the service was quite slow, which often results in small queues of boats forming in front of the order window. Some boats even gave up and left the queue because the waiting time was too long. However, if you have a little patience, you will be rewarded with delicious treats. You can pay conveniently by card.
Can we Recommend it?
Yes, even if the quality of the snacks and drinks is not overwhelming, the extraordinary experience at Café Canale more than makes up for it. A boat trip on the Mühlenkamp Canal combined with a stop at Café Canale is definitely an activity worth recommending in Hamburg. We will come back and enjoy the adventure again!
Overall Rating
