Buenos Aires is a city full of surprises. Did you know the charming capital of Argentina has more bookstores per person than any other city in the world? In the collective imagination of Buenos Aires, the old cafes are an oasis where the Porteños love flipping through books and drinking a cortado. This is a romantic place, with coffee bars set beneath a canopy of bluish purple flowers from the Jacaranda trees. Some of these coffee shops are a hundred years old or more and were once haunts of Argentinian icons such as writer Jorge Luis Borges and tango singer Carlos Gardel.
It may be no shock to learn that the beverages in these classic cafes are a bit stuck in the past, and almost beside the point—like the historic cafes of Vienna or the kissaten of Tokyo, these spaces are not modeled off of new wave coffee standards. But on a recent trip to Buenos Aires, I discovered—surprise—a new generation of baristas and roasters willing to challenge the status quo and bring coffee in this city up to a new set of standards. The irresistible beat of delicious coffee is dancing tango through the streets of Buenos Aires—here are seven places to start your trip.
