35 cafés in 3 citys. Places change: check opening hours before you go.
Opened in 1928 opposite Parque Lezama, first as La Cosechera; it was renamed for the British railway workers who lived nearby. Three Galician partners ran it round the clock for decades, and its original oak panelling survived the 2007 refurbishment.
Order: Cortado · Café con leche
💡 Open daily from 9 am to 3 am; ask for a window table over the park.
A former almacén with a bar on a San Telmo corner, in a 19th-century building. Its two rooms are full of old adverts, photos from the 1920s and 30s, coloured soda siphons and portraits of tango figures.
Order: Cortado · Apple strudel
A pulpería stood on this corner near Congress from 1860 and became a café in 1930. Three future presidents, Illia, Alfonsín and Menem, sat at its tables. It closed in 2002 and reopened in 2008, with views of the Confitería del Molino and Congress from its windows.
Order: Cortado · Sándwich de miga
A much-loved Boedo corner in a building put up in 1904. Its pickled turkey sandwich is legendary: the story goes that Perón had his driver stop here so he could try it.
Order: Sándwich de pavita en escabeche · Cortado
A La Boca Bar Notable open since 1905, first as an annex to a general store. It has brick walls, a chessboard floor, an old kerosene lamp and vintage tin signs; Gardel is said to have sung here and painter Quinquela Martín was a regular.
Order: Breakfast with medialunas · Tostado
💡 Breakfast and afternoon merienda are the best times to come.
Buenos Aires' oldest café, named by its French founder after the famous Café Tortoni in Paris. Borges, García Lorca, Cortázar and Carlos Gardel all sat at its marble tables, and it was the first café in the city to put tables out on the pavement.
Order: Cortado · Chocolate con churros
💡 Open daily 8 am to 9 pm; there is often a queue at the door, and tango dinner shows run in the evenings.
Founded around 1890 as Bar Rivadavia; a police chief sarcastically called its rough crowd 'real little angels' and the name stuck. Gardel and Razzano signed their first record deal here in 1917; it vanished in 1993 and reopened in 2007 with 350 old photos on the walls.
Order: Cortado · Medialunas
💡 Nightly tango dinner shows run in the theatre next to the café salon.
A Belle Époque confitería founded in 1912 by Spanish immigrant Manuel Rosendo Fernández. It closed in 2017 for a five-year restoration of its stained-glass dome, chandeliers and woodwork, and reopened in November 2022 with its own bakery, pastry kitchen and chocolate shop.
Order: Café con leche with house pastries · Merienda
💡 Look up: the dome is made of 60 stained-glass panels. The first floor has hosted milongas since the 1970s.
A La Boca café and restaurant rooted on this corner since 1880, once a fonda for port workers. Its 3.5-metre pewter bar, maybe the only one that size left in the city, is the centrepiece, and the room has appeared in several Argentine films.
Order: Cortado · Lunch at the bar
A spice shop born in 1927 that still keeps its original oak counters and shelves. Coffee and tea are roasted and ground in view, and you drink them at genuine Thonet tables surrounded by jars of spices from around the world.
Order: Coffee roasted and ground on site · A pot of tea
💡 Buy a bag of freshly ground coffee or a spice blend on the way out.
A Bar Notable a hundred metres from the Recoleta Cemetery. Around 1950 a racing driver's connecting rod (biela) broke at this corner; he stopped for coffee, and Fangio and his fellow drivers made it their hangout. Borges and Bioy Casares were regulars too.
Order: Cortado · Medialunas
💡 Ask for a table with a view of Plaza Francia.
Opened in 1930 as a small dairy bar by an Andalusian, Francisco Garrido, famous for chocolate with churros. For decades it stayed open 24 hours on Corrientes; it closed in 2018, reopened in August 2021 with its white tiles and marble tables, and was named a Site of Cultural Interest in October 2025.
Order: Chocolate con churros · Cortado
A Bar Notable on the corner at the entrance to Caminito, open since 1882. Inside are wooden ceilings, exposed brick, filete signs and tango photos; painter Benito Quinquela Martín was a regular.
Order: Cortado · Submarino (hot milk with a chocolate bar)
💡 Come early, before the Caminito tour groups arrive.
Opened on 21 September 1884 with Carrara marble, French stained glass and furniture brought from Paris. Poet Alfonsina Storni was a regular; it closed in 1998, was restored and reopened in 2001, and in 2017 the public voted it the city's best café notable.
Order: Merienda (afternoon tea spread) · Café con leche
💡 Afternoons bring a line of people waiting for the famously generous meriendas.
Opened on 28 September 1954 on the ground floor of an old Gath & Chaves annex. Julio Cortázar wrote part of his first novel, Los premios, here and opens the book in this café; a figure of him sits at one of the tables.
Order: Cortado · Medialunas
💡 Look for the Cortázar figure at his table.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
Opened in 1894 as Avenida de Mayo was taking shape, it still has eight billiard tables over 120 years old in its basement. Federico García Lorca dropped in from the nearby Hotel Castelar, and the city declared it cultural heritage when a pizza chain bought it in 2013.
Order: Cortado · Medialunas
💡 Head downstairs to watch (or join) a game in the Osvaldo Berardi billiard room.
A traditional Rosario bar opened in 1943 on the ground floor of an old house, long a meeting place for artists and intellectuals. Writer Roberto Fontanarrosa made it famous in La mesa de los galanes.
Order: Cortado
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A Bar Notable a block from the Manzana de las Luces, in a building that still has colonial-era mud-and-straw bricks. It opened in the early 20th century as a grocery with a bar and was a location for the film Nueve Reinas (2000).
Order: Espresso · Sandwich with regional cured meats
From 1930 this was the all-night pool and billiards café at Callao and Corrientes. It closed in February 2025 and reopened that June round the corner, keeping its waiters and its promise of staying open 24 hours.
Order: Cortado · Late-night coffee over dominoes
💡 Open 24 hours Thursday to Sunday and on public holidays; there's pool, billiards, chess and table football.
An elegant corner café on the Recoleta–Palermo border since 1969. Tomás Eloy Martínez met here in 1989 with the colonel who had moved Eva Perón's body, a meeting that became part of his novel Santa Evita.
Order: Té del encuentro (coffee or tea with pastries for two)
Poet Rubén Derlis opened this San Telmo corner in 1982, and it became a home for poets, writers and filmmakers. It closed in the late 1980s and reopened in 2008 on the same corner, looking the same as before.
Order: Cortado · Vermú
💡 Look for the plaque on the first table by the corner window, dedicated to Horacio Ferrer and his love Lulú.
A neighbourhood café that houses the Simik Photography Museum, founded in 2001. Its collection of more than 20,000 photographs and antique cameras rotates on the walls, and you don't need to buy a coffee to look around.
Order: Cortado
💡 New exhibitions open on the first Wednesday of each month.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A family-run neighbourhood café in Villa Devoto with three billiard tables. Every wall is covered in old sewing machines, cash registers, soda bottles and photos.
Order: Cortado · The picada (about 30 small dishes)
💡 The famous picada is served Thursday to Saturday nights.
An Almagro café from the early 20th century that started as a grocery called El Asturiano. Its owner's tribute to River Plate grew into a collection of more than 500 football pennants from clubs around the world.
Order: Cortado · Medialunas
💡 Hunt the walls for your own club's pennant.
There has been a café on this San Telmo corner since 1909, first called La Estrella del Sur. It's a dim room lit by colourful enamel signs, and Tita Merello, Ernesto Sabato and Osvaldo Soriano all drank here.
Order: Cortado · Panqueque de dulce de leche
A French winegrowing family arrived in Buenos Aires in 1935 and opened this café three years later. It's known for its wine shop and for its own roasted, ground coffee.
Order: Espresso of the house-roasted coffee
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
An Italian-style espresso bar opened in 1962 on Lavalle, back when it was the street of cinemas. Four clocks show the time in Buenos Aires, Rome, Madrid and Athens, and a Lagorio espresso machine never stops at the stand-up counter.
Order: Espresso at the bar · Medialunas
💡 Drink it standing at the right-hand counter, as the regulars do.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A café and bar facing Plaza Lavalle since 1978, next door to the Teatro Colón. It has boiserie, dark red embossed wallpaper, a long wooden bar, Thonet chairs and Viennese coat stands.
Order: Cortado · Medialuna de grasa
💡 A good stop before or after a tour of the Teatro Colón.
A Retiro confitería open since 1959, with mirrored columns and red-and-yellow tablecloths. In the 1960s and 70s gallery-goers came here for tea, and Borges and his mother, who lived nearby, talked at its tables.
Order: Café con leche · Sándwich de miga
A traditional café on Obispo Trejo, the street of Córdoba's historic university quarter. No wifi, just old-school atmosphere.
Order: Café
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A Buenos Aires specialty roaster dating from 2011, with cafés in Palermo, Belgrano, Chacarita, Recoleta and La Plata. It sells beans like a Bourbon Sidra from Patio Bonito.
Order: Flat white · Filter coffee of a single origin
💡 Cafés open Tuesday to Sunday.
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
A Palermo specialty café that roasts its own seasonal beans, runs barista training, and has a pretty outdoor space.
Order: Filter coffee of the season's beans · Flat white
Fewer recent sources for this one: check it's open before you go.
Opened in 2015 as the first specialty coffee bar in downtown Buenos Aires. Since 2020 it has roasted its own beans under the name Fuego Tostadores and runs its own barista school.
Order: Espresso · Filter coffee
A Palermo family restaurant that is also a specialty coffee roaster and bakery, built on family recipes passed down through generations.
Order: Flat white · Fresh pastry from the bakery
Opened in 2021, Rita pairs carefully made coffee with handmade pastries and signature dishes, in a space where the architecture and design are part of the experience.
Order: Espresso · Artisanal pastry