Barcelona Coffee Tour

Several months ago, the Artist and the Bodybuilder (and friends) were in Rome and decided to take a "coffee tour."  They looked up online where the best cafés and baristas were, and then went and hit them all up to see who had the best coffee.  The coffee tour became a regular event as those two continued to vacation around Europe near the end of their two-year term.  Since I'd already been to Barcelona and I love coffee too, I thought it'd be fun to join in the tour.  

Coffee stop #1: El Magnifico.  As we did our online research, El Magnifico came up time and again.  That's where we decided to go our first morning in Barcelona.  It took a little bit of wandering around the Gothic Quarter to find it, but we find arrived.

Look at that gorgeous Art Nouveau stained glass!  This is one of the many reasons I love Barcelona...

 We didn't go to El Magnifico to admire the Art Nouveau, but to drink the coffee, so let me refocus.  The Artist ordered her standard cappuccino.  If you're going to do a good controlled experiment, I suppose you ought to order the same thing ever time.  Look how happy she is...

I was amazed at the fancy schmancy types of coffee one could order beyond just an espresso, and so after discussing it with another girl in the group, we decided to order the Chemex together and share it.  Little did we know that we were in for quite the experience...

First, we had to decide which coffee beans we wanted.  We originally chose some from Indonesia, but they were in the process of roasting those, so we had to go with our second choice, which was Kebena Forest from Ethiopia.

After the beans were ground, the barista held them out for us to smell before she began the brewing process.  I've never been asked to smell my coffee grinds before...

She put them in the filter in the Chemex...

And then carved a small hole in the middle of the grinds.  (Also, she warmed the Chemex first with boiling water before beginning anything...)

Then, slowly and meticulously, standing on a stool so that she was the right height above the Chemex, she poured boiling water in spirals over the coffee grinds.

It made the gorgeous caramel-colored foam on top that I love in a good espresso and have never seen in a brewed coffee before.

Then we had to wait for it filter down.  She timed the filtering, and after four and a half minutes, removed the filter and threw it out, despite that there was still water left in it.  I kid you not, there was less than a half a cup of coffee in the bottom of that Chemex.  We wondered if she was going to do it again or was that all we were going to get?

Then she warmed our coffeemugs wine glasses with boiling water...

And poured our Chemex brewed coffee into the wine glasses.  Have you ever had coffee out of a wine glass?  Me neither.

See that amount?  That's all we got.  For reals.  That's all the coffee we got!  It wasn't strong, it wasn't dark, and it wasn't even hot.  I suppose we paid for the experience more than the coffee.

Here we are laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was.  Did it taste good?  I suppose.  Or maybe I suppose that I'm more of an espresso kind of gal because I needed much more than that little bit in a fancy glass gave me.  I didn't want to insult the barista who'd worked so hard on our Chemex, so I asked the Artist to order me an espresso to go that I could throw back right quick when the barista wasn't looking.

All in all, I will say this: El Magnifico has some legit coffee, and they really do pull a great espresso shot.  And if Chemex is your thing, it's the place to go.  I loved our experience there, honestly, and had a great time with friends while surrounded by Art Nouveau.

Coffee stop #2: Central Café.  Our second morning, we headed off to the Central Café to see how it compared to the highly recommended El Magnifico.  One thing that we liked better: plenty of seating!  Also, it was really neat that the entire menu was in Catalan, which is always fun to encounter in Barcelona.  

You may remember how I fell in love with the Cappuccino Freddo in Greece, and I was thrilled to see many cafés serving it in Barcelona.  I decided to see if it was the same as in Greece, and here's what I got:

The "really good" napkins didn't lie.  It was really good.  I also had an espresso, to continue the controlled experiment and compare it to El Magnifico.  El Mag won the espresso round, while Central won the atmosphere round.  Here's what some others ordered:

The drink to order in Barcelona is called the "tallat" (in Catalan) or the "cortado" (in Spanish).  It's basically an espresso shot topped off with milk.  I tried it once, but since I don't love milk in my coffee (unless the whole thing is cold), it wasn't my thing.

I also ordered a chocolat croissant to compare it to France's.  While France's actual croissant is better, I think Barcelona beats them on the chocolate part, because there was chocolate inside (like the pain au chocolat in France), but the ends were dipped in chocolate as well.  And let's face it, more chocolate always wins!

Coffee stop #3: Satan's Coffee Corner.  Yes, that's what it's called.  We went, but it turned out to be more of a novelty store that had a small coffee machine than an actual café, which meant that they also didn't have room to seat all 8 of us.  So we wandered until we found a legit looking café, and had breakfast there.  The coffee was nothing special, but it sure did do the job.

Coffee stop #4: A random coffee shop on the corner near the metro on my way to the bus station, where I took no photos because I was a bit sad over having said the final goodbye to the Artist and the Bodybuilder that morning.  The coffee was good, the atmosphere great, and there was plenty of seating.  I think I found the winner...but a little too late since the other judges had already left the continent.

All in all, I enjoyed the coffee tour and will likely do it again in other European cities.  It makes deciding where to get one's daily coffee a bit more fun.  Plus, you never know what'll happen...you might just get served coffee out of a wine glass!