Breakfast bowls from 04:00–11:00 are the reason to stop here
By the C-gates in Terminal 1’s Schengen area, Loksins Café & Bar is one of the few KEF spots doing real breakfast bowls instead of just pastries. From 04:00–11:00 they run a separate menu with chia bowls, overnight oats with granola, and an acai blueberry option, all sitting around 1,699 ISK, which reviewers keep calling “reasonable for an airport.” It’s post-security, so you can walk straight here after duty free and still be at most 2–3 minutes from most C-gate boarding calls.
The rest of the day it leans standard café: espresso drinks, basic bar service, and pastries. People mention grabbing cinnamon buns and coffees before departure and landing at roughly $$ pricing by US standards, still cheaper than many other KEF outlets. Hours track KEF’s morning and afternoon flight waves, so expect it open for the early 04:30–08:30 bank and again for mid-day and afternoon runs, but not deep overnight.
Coffee quality sits a notch above the generic stands in Terminal 1, which is why regulars walk past other counters at the C-gates to queue here instead. A latte plus a pastry ends up around what you’d pay for just a sandwich elsewhere in KEF. Some TripAdvisor reviewers even call drinks “cheap (for Iceland),” especially compared with Reykjavik city spots where a similar order can add several hundred ISK.
What regulars do: they swing by Loksins near the C-gates to stock up before 5–7 hour U.S.-bound flights, grabbing breakfast bowls or extra snacks because on-board options feel limited. Others just order coffee and a cinnamon bun to go and then sit near their exact gate A321 or 757 departure, avoiding the bar area during the peak 05:00–07:00 crowd.
Watch out for the early-morning crush: multiple reviews mention standing-room-only and scarce seats during the 04:30–07:30 departure bank, especially near Hjá Höllu next door. If your flight shows boarding at, say, 06:10 from a C-gate, hit Loksins by 05:15, order quickly, and take your tray or takeaway cup back toward your specific gate for better seating and calmer Wi‑Fi use.