Oh Madrid. How you surprise me anew every time I visit you. You’re so full of life, so wonderfully tolerant and incredibly welcoming. And apart from being a beautiful grande dame, your inhabitants keep you young and fresh. Inhabitants like the amazing people behind Hola Coffee, one of the city’s many new arrivals on its fast-growing specialty coffee scene. One or two years ago you may have said that it’s all about Barcelona. Now, Madrid is where it’s at.
As you wander past the Museo Reina Sofia and navigate the narrow streets of Lavapies to reach Calle del Dr. Fourquet, a bizarre melange of yoga, art, sex, retail and great coffee, you immediately appreciate how taking a left turn on a busy street can instantly remove you from the stream of tourists and let you cruise down a quiet river of local quiet neighbourhood bliss.
Hola Coffee is a bright coffee shop that is lit up by the hospitality of its lovely owners Pablo Caballero y Nolo Botana. Both have spent many years working in coffee and met while both worked at a large commercial coffee roasters where they decided that it was time to add some new flavour to Madrid’s nascent specialty coffee scene.
Their concept is simple. Great coffees, roasted by Nolo, and served in an – environment. So much so that my dear friend Kim Staalman cannot stop raving about these guys. Naturally, after landing in Madrid recently, I made Hola Coffee my first stop to verify whether she was completely exaggerating or actually for real. Turned out she was for real.
The guys serve their own exquisite single origin coffees alongside the occasional guest roaster on the batch brewer – at the time of my visit Square Mile had the honour – and the complement their coffee menu with a small selection of cakes and other goodies.
On a hot summer day, you may want to go for one of their refreshing cold brews, also available bottled for you to take home. For a city whose inhabitants by and large still turn up their noses at specialty coffee, Hola attracts a surprisingly knowledgable and discerning crowd of coffee lovers who have long been waiting for more places like this to arrive. As one customer said to me: “Why are we always behind everyone? I should be able to enjoy a damn fine cup of filter coffee if I please, shouldn’t I? I mean, we’re not in Siberia here!” Sir, I couldn’t agree with you more.
