Toma Cafe: Madrid’s Best Coffee

By Harry

Location:  Toma Cafe

Dos Espressos por favor

Calle La Palma 49, 28004

Madrid, Spain

It was 5 September 2011.  Bruce and I had a 24 hour stop in Madrid on his Birthday.  Our friend Miguel took us on a special birthday tour around hip and artsy city.  Naturally we had to hit the hippest neighborhood in Madrid, Malasaña.  This hood is famous for its progressive alternative culture.  Instantly I was reminded of “The Mission” in San Francisco.  Miguel didn’t drink coffee, so he didn’t know the best cafe’s in town, but I knew there had to be a good barista near by.  Sure enough as we walked down Calle de la Palma we found Toma Cafe.

What's on the menu?

Toma Cafe was our hidden gem in Madrid.  Finding good specialty coffee is a hard task. Really the leaders in this movement are the Australians – Melbourne in particular.  Spain for example, doesn’t have specialty coffee on every corner. Notice, I’ve used the words “ Specialty Coffee,” there are a lot of good coffee places all through europe, but not all are “ Specialty Coffee.”

On the menu was coffee from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ecuador, etc.  My order was an espresso “ristretto” double, a short-poured espresso with a double basket of espresso coffee.  Delicious and a definite wake up to the day.  I couldn’t have been happier.  Now Bruce didn’t only get an early beer for his birthday celebration, he also got an espresso.

I want one!

Before we left Toma Cafe I had to tell them that we were going to return to Madrid in November…

Now that we are back in Madrid I was able to go back and enjoy more espresso from my favorite cafe in madrid.  Naturally I had to pass this along to all my coffee lover friends who love OH.  Here’s a little video OH produced showcasing the cafe:

Bruce enjoys his coffee

All the Coffee in the “Coffee” section of OH are dedicated to those fans.  If you love good coffee and have trouble finding good coffee around the world, OH Coffee will have our recommendations from the places we’ve been.  Real coffee hunters searching for Specialty Coffee.