Café Avellaneda

Tucked onto a quiet side street of Coyoacán’s zócalo, a short walk from the Frida Kahlo Museum, Café Avellaneda has been setting the standard for specialty coffee in Mexico City for over a decade: roasting its own beans in-house, sourcing exclusively from Mexican farms, and treating the bar with the same rigor one expects of a serious kitchen. Owner Carlos de la Torre, a two-time Mexican Brewers Cup champion, opened the rust-colored coffee bar with a clear conviction that Mexican beans from Chiapas, Veracruz, and Oaxaca deserved to be celebrated at home. The menu rotates monthly, each coffee selected and recipe-developed collectively by the team, then paired with a pastry menu built to complement it. The signature Juanito, a heady mix of espresso, tamarind, lemon, juniper, and tonic over ice, is inventive without being gimmicky, and the cold brew tonic with lemon peel is a revelation on a warm afternoon. Every cup arrives with a small glass of water, a detail borrowed from Italian café culture that feels entirely at home here. At an intimate twenty square meters, Avellaneda is small — but what it has accomplished for Mexican coffee culture is anything but.