Latorre Simón

Latorre Simón is a neighborhood cafe in the heart of Garrucha, the sort of room you pass once and then return to. It does the unglamorous work of being open and being good, day after day, without asking for credit. There is a quiet steadiness to the place, the sense of a room that knows exactly what it is for. Across Spain, places like this form the everyday backbone of how people take their coffee.

The pace is unhurried, the welcome is genuine, and the coffee does its job without making a fuss. What it lacks in polish it tends to make up for in character, which is what keeps regulars coming back. Drinks are made to be enjoyed rather than photographed, though there is no rule against both.

Geographically, Latorre Simón sits in Garrucha, Spain, easy to fold into a day already spent nearby. The surrounding blocks give it the steady foot traffic that keeps a coffee counter honest. Either way, it is an easy one to find and a fair one to seek out. Part of what a place like this offers is simply somewhere to be for a few minutes, cup in hand. The coffee stops that last tend to be the ones you stop thinking about and just use, and this reads like one of them.