Cafe Palacio Barolo

Av. de Mayo 1370 (between San Jose & Santiago del Estero), City Center

As I have almost certainly mentioned before, the Palacio Barolo is one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Aires. It is a simply magnificent mish-mash of architectural styles, held together by some amazing numeric symbolism that acts as a tribute to Dante Alighieri, and his epic poem “The Divine Comedy”. I will write a full post about the building and the fascinating stories behind it very soon, when I get the chance to take some more pictures that will fully do it justice.

For now however, this post is a review of the cafe that recently opened on its ground floor, Cafe Palacio Barolo, which is pretty darn good on its own merits, and also acts as an additional excellent excuse to spend some time inside this fantastic building. This is also my first post on the theme of Buenos Aires Cafes, and believe me it will be the first of many, because Buenos Aires is a city full of places to get your caffeine fix, and cafe culture also plays an important part in everyday life here.

[The Palacio Barolo building and cafe are featured on my suggested walking tour of Buenos Aires City Center, which can also by booked as a private walking tour of Buenos Aires, personally guided by me]

A Beautiful New Cafe in Buenos Aires

The Stylish Interior of Cafe Palacio Barolo

As you can see from the above picture, the cafe at the Palacio Barolo looks bright & clean and spick & span, being that it is in its first few months since opening. As part of a stunningly designed 1923 building, it of course has pieces of classic old world style, most specifically the ornamental ceiling work, but it is also mixed with some more modern touches, such as the reinforced glass floor of the seating area above the bar. Old and new go together very nicely in this case (as they do across the streets of Buenos Aires), and produce a very pleasant environment for a relaxed coffee or two.

If you are a visitor to the city and are strolling down Avenida de Mayo, the most obvious choice for a pit stop up until now has been Cafe Tortoni, as the oldest and most famous cafe in Buenos Aires. However, its status has obvious advantages and drawbacks - it is famous for a reason (beautiful interior, lots of history etc), but that also attracts the crowds of tourists, which can occasionally make for an unpleasant, loud atmosphere, and a long wait for service, or even to enter the cafe at all.

Meanwhile, Cafe Palacio Barolo is very calm and relaxed, but also based in a beautiful building with a lot of history in its own right, so it is certainly another good alternative option to Tortoni if you are in this area of Buenos Aires City Center. For those of you that can’t wait for my future post to learn more about fascinating design and history the building itself, fellow Buenos Aires bloggers Robert and Karine have both posted some excellent photos and information in the past.

The Coffee?

Coffee at Cafe Palacio Barolo

Now, I’m not much of a coffee expert, at least in comparison with many people from the USA (where the majority of my readers are based). I am from a nation of tea drinkers after all! Still, I think that when I review a cafe I should at least attempt to comment on the coffee. We ordered a cortado en jarrito each (a cortado is an espresso ‘cut’ with a small amount of hot milk, to take the edge off of it… and a cortado en jarrito is the same but in a taller cup, so you get more coffee), and they were very nice. Nothing spectacular, just decent coffee. I have heard some people say the coffee in Argentina is generally not that great, but for me it is usually pretty good, certainly in comparison to coffee in the UK.

However, the best part for me about the coffee in this cafe is that quite delightfully, everything comes with the Palacio Barolo monogram on it - the table, the cups, the napkins, the sugar holder, and even each individual sugar lump wrapper all bear the trendy little logo on the side - very cute, as can be seen in the picture above. It’s little touches like this that make me happy. I guess I must be easy to please
The prices are a little on the expensive side - 9 pesos for a cafe con leche y tres medialunas, but not overly so in all cases - for example the cortado en jarrito was 5 pesos, which is fairly reasonable. But remember, you are also paying for this privileged location inside one of the most remarkable buildings in Buenos Aires.

Watching the World Go By

Sidewalk tables outside the Palacio Barolo

Almost every part of Cafe Palacio Barolo is perfect for that most common and enjoyable of porteño pastimes - people watching. For a start, there are some nice sidewalk tables, perfect for an afternoon coffee on a nice sunny day, as you watch the people amble, the taxis zip, and the colectivos career down elegant Avenida de Mayo. Then there is a nice large glass window front on the cafe, which not only fills it wonderfully with huge amounts of light, but also affords more people watching as the outside world passes the cafe by.

Cafe Palacio Barolo - People Watching

Finally there is the balcony seating area above the bar, which is the perfect spot for some sneaky people watching opportunities, in this case of the other cafe clientèle seated down below. The balcony was where we sat on this occasion, and as you can see from the the photo to the right, I am most certainly a nosy so and so.

Cafe Palacio Barolo is certainly a great place to while away the hours over a coffee or two, which is something that should make you fit right in with the locals…

Whereas back home (at least, certainly in the UK) we are in and out of cafes fairly quickly, often hurried out by the waiter who is looking to make your table free for another paying customer, here in Buenos Aires it is quite normal to spend hours on end (no exaggeration) over one small coffee, chatting with friends or just relaxing by yourself. The waiters won’t get annoyed or rush you in any Buenos Aires cafe - in fact most of the time you have more of a job finding anyone who will take your money off you when you want to leave.

However, if there is one small downside to the Cafe Palacio Barolo, it is the fact that it is recently - perhaps word has not got around about it yet, and so at the moment it generally seems to not be very busy. This may suit some people who will enjoy the peace and quiet (and also it means the service is attentive), but if you are a people watcher, it certainly cuts down on your enjoyment, and the overall atmosphere. But hopefully this review will help a little to get the word out and make the cafe just a little more busy!