Lab Tostadores de Café, Buenos Aires

Coffee is a need for speed… but not all the time.

Fashionable looking Porteños trot past us, managing the ineffable act of being brisk and laidback at the same time. This is Buenos Aires, where even if you’re in a hurry, you’re never in that much of a hurry that you couldn’t stop by a coffee bar for a cortado (that truly Argentinian cuppa).

Here in Palermo – specifically Palermo Hollywood, so named thanks to its preponderance of film industry types – there is always time for coffee, especially if you’re going to talk shop about some non-existent deal. Residents know the best spot for their espressos and V60 brews: Lab Tostadores de Café.

The brainchild of Alexis Zagdañski and Paula Zyssholtz, Lab Tostadores de Café first opened in 2014 and the bar is now headed by veteran Brazilian barista Annete Alve. Expect beans from the usual suspects – Brazil, Central America and Africa; the latter for acidity and fruity notes long missing from the typical Argentinian coffee lover’s palate.

They roast their own beans here, with a formidable Diedrich IR12 roaster, hence the dedication to educating the neighbourhood on a different coffee flavour profile. The kitchen dishes out what the chef terms New American Cuisine – which entails lots of breakfast bowls, salads, fruits, tomato “carpaccio” and grilled polenta – executed better than they need to.

Don’t blame us if we do like a Porteño would and not hurry.

布宜諾斯艾利斯是我們這趟南美之行的第一站，
所下榻的酒店就位於熱鬧的巴勒莫 – 好萊塢區裡。
這一區除了聚集了好幾家的電台和電視台外，
還有許多的各式餐館和酒吧，
當然也少不了文青們最愛的咖啡館。

距離酒店不遠處，便是Lab Tostadores de Café，
一家開業於2014年的精品咖啡館。
咖啡館外觀摩登簡潔明亮，
一樓是吧檯和廚房，二樓則是烘豆坊。
在Lab Tostadores de Café這除了可以品嚐到由他們自家烘焙的咖啡外，
食物的選擇也不少，無論是糕點甜品，還是沙拉熱食，
總有一樣能滿足你的口腹之慾。

才剛下機不久的我們，既想填飽肚子，
還想來杯香醇的手沖黑咖啡提提神。
由於菜單上不少豆子都已售罄，
最終選了兩杯不同處理法的哥倫比亞，再來兩份熱食。
我選咖啡帶點青草味，如果單喝咖啡，也許不是我喜歡的類型，
不過配上重口味的早點，感覺還不錯；
至於馬少倒是蠻喜歡他點的那杯。
而食物方面，無論是甜還是鹹食，我們都一致認為很棒，
查了資料，廚師把他的作品稱為New American Cuisine，
很有趣吧？