Tostao sits at street level inside Casa Bonay, where Gran Via meets one of Barcelona's more interesting experiments in contemporary hospitality. It belongs to the hotel, but does not require you to be staying there to make sense. From the street, it works simply as a neighbourhood café, an easy entrance into the larger world Casa Bonay has built behind it. Coffee has been part of that world from the beginning. Casa Bonay was home to one of Barcelona's earlier speciality-coffee spaces, and Tostao is its current incarnation. Its name comes from a Venezuelan folk song, while the coffee itself stays connected to Barcelona through local roaster Nomad. The pastry counter gives the café another identity. Breads and cakes are made in-house by Japanese pâtissier Natsumi, adding something more considered than the standard coffee-and-pastry arrangement. It makes Tostao as convincing for something sweet in the afternoon as it is for the first coffee of the morning. What makes the place particularly interesting is its relationship with Casa Bonay. The hotel occupies a restored 19th-century building and has developed into a collection of spaces with different rhythms: rooms above, food and drink at street level, and places intended to be used by Barcelona as much as by hotel guests. Tostao is one of the simplest expressions of that idea. There is no need to understand the entire Casa Bonay world before walking in. Tostao works on the scale of an everyday café: coffee, something baked in-house, a table and the movement of Gran Via just outside. Stay longer and the connection to the hotel becomes more apparent, but the café never feels dependent on it. That independence is part of its appeal. Tostao may live inside Casa Bonay, but it has enough character to be a Barcelona address in its own right.
Eixample, Barcelona, Spain