The rooftop café of the Casa de Cultura Mário Quintana — sometimes called Café do Museu, sometimes just the café on the roof of the old hotel — is Porto Alegre's best-located coffee stop: a terrace on the top floor of the former Hotel Majestic, with views over the city centre rooftops to the Guaíba and the hills beyond. On weekend mornings, when the city below is still waking up and the light is soft, it is one of those places that makes you glad you are in the city at all.
The coffee is good — Porto Alegre is in a coffee-serious part of Brazil, with strong Italian espresso traditions — and the food menu runs to sandwiches, pastries, and light plates that work well for breakfast or a late morning snack. The café shares the building with galleries, a cinema, and studios, so the clientele tends toward the cultural: artists, writers, people who have come to see an exhibition and stayed for the terrace. The view improves through the morning as the haze burns off. Getting there requires walking through the building (follow the signs from the main entrance on Rua dos Andradas), which takes you past whatever exhibition is current — an accidental but effective way to see the art.