A recent article in Business Insider was rapidly passed around, more for its headline than its content. The title asserted “The key to happiness might be living within walking distance of a coffee shop”. I realize it’s stated as a possibility, but if it’s true, I ought to be positively giddy with delight. We’ve always had cafés in our neighborhood of Recoleta, from little local spots to chains, but for some reason, in the last year or so, a spate of new ones has opened up – seemingly one on almost every block. And all, of course, announcing that they are serving café de especialidad, or specialty coffee. None of them specify what makes their coffee “especial”, but, there it is. I was also faced with deciding what constituted a café. Obviously listing every place that happens to serve coffee wasn’t the approach, and in the end, it was more or less a gut sense – a place I’d stop into simply to have a coffee and a pastry, which also means I’ve left out a couple of “to-go” only spots that have nowhere to sit and relax.

 

By my count there are some 47 cafés and 2 teahouses in what I’d consider my immediate neighborhood. It’s not a precise outline or distance, I just sort of look at where the borders hit that I’d start to feel, subjectively, like I’m no longer in it – for the most part, bounded by larger avenues or other urban features. As a rough guide, the furthest away from me is eight blocks, and the closest, half a block. These include, by the way, four Starbucks, and branches of local chains Havana, Café Martinez, Lattente, two Pandanes, and two La Argentina.

I’d never considered trying them all until now, but it might be an interesting exercise in caffeination and the consuming of pastries. For today’s post, I’ve picked out half a dozen that I’ve checked out recently, just for this.

This place is the closest of the new cafés to me, and, it’s, well, cute. I’m not sure why it’s called Stockholm – there seem to be a spate of new cafés around the city with Nordic names, is there something special about Scandinavia that relates to coffee shops? This one is located just about a two minute walk from home, at Peña 2330. On a first visit, the simple coffee was excellent. I was less enamored of the huge slap of budín, more or less a sort of pound cake here, and their signature pastry. While it’s orange and chocolate flavors were spot on, it was also dry and crumbly – basically stale. But the coffee was good enough for a return visit and an iced coffee, also excellent, but again, here a couple of cheese scones were so dry I couldn’t finish them. I don’t know if I just had bad luck with a couple of older things, or if it’s the way they store their pastries, but thumbs up for coffee, service, ambiance, and location, but thumbs down on the baked goods.

Almost as close, just the opposite direction, is another Nordic monikered spot, ÖSSkaffe, at Pacheco de Melo 1860. This café is located sort of in/on the side of a hostel that I didn’t even know existed, Casa Franca. There are a couple of tables outside, and just two inside. It’s very cozy, and the staff are very friendly. Again, excellent coffee, particularly their cold brew, but their iced coffee (the cold brew with milk and sugar added), and their hot coffee are outstanding as well. They make great little pão de queijo, little Brazilian cheese breads, and sfogliatelle, but I like the tasty little two bite peanut butter stuffed date coated in chocolate. It may not be a pastry, but it hits the spot on the side of the orange-infused cold brew.

I’m not sure why La Voluntad, Azuénaga 1390, garnered two visits from me. The coffee is Nescafé, which is fine, but nothing special. And the space feels like being in some sort of San Francisco yuppie haven circa 1980. There was a cute waiter, that must be it. So, coffee is good, though the iced coffee is way overloaded with milk and sugar. A quite good pasta frola, a local specialty of quince paste in a short crust pastry, though not very good medialunas de grasa, the slightly savory version of the Argentine imitation of a croissant – these were meager and chewy. I wouldn’t object to returning, but it isn’t on my list to do so.

This is the only one of the six spots in today’s post that I found the coffee to simply be lacking. Here at Costanzo, Azcuénaga 1493, it was watery, and had a weird burnt treacle note to it that left me with an aftertaste I wanted to scrape off my palate. Service was friendly but sort of off in space. The space itself, cramped, though there is outdoor seating. Decent carrot cake. Overall, a pass.

This place used to be a fairly mediocre coffee shop called Costa Verde. Recently reopened at Riche Cafeteria, at Junín 1294, it’s rebranded as a French patisserie and café. As an aside, they offer up an excellent and eminently reasonable sandwich and beverage combo for lunch – I particularly like their chicken and bacon sandwich on a ciabatta. But, today, we’re here for the coffee – very good, and the highly recommended… danish? filled with pastry cream, mixed berries, and daubed with chocolate. It was a whole lot bigger than expected, and while tasty, it’s not light and flaky, but rather dense and chewy. The ambiance is a bit rushed, the service is barely pleasant. I’ll stick with the occasional sandwich to go.

Borja, Juncal 2303, is the sort of spot where, looking around, not one person is engaged with another person – they’re all on their notebook computers or phones. One woman actually had an array of phone, tablet, and laptop around her as she rapidly engaged all three. I might have assumed she was hard at work, but given that she wasn’t quiet, it was clear she was just chatting with friends via three separate devices, and we really didn’t all need to be a part of those conversations – maybe try a group Zoom and headphones? An excellent iced coffee, and one of the best cinnamon rolls I’ve had since moving to Buenos Aires. Friendly service. High tension atmosphere that just screams out “influencers”.

I have created a little map of the cafés here in the area (a static picture of all of them at the top of this post), that I’ll update with more reviews as I get to them.