Casa Taos Coffee & Sustainable Shopping
(This post refers to the original location in Poble Nou – Casa Taos has since moved to Sant Marti)
I have so many choices when it comes to good coffee. I can walk a few blocks in any direction and find somewhere I love. It wasn’t always so. The uptake of craft coffee in Barcelona was slow.
Several changes contributed to the growth of the craft coffee movement. If you ask me, and I will pretend you did, I would argue that there have been three significant ones. First, an influx of people from places where craft coffee was a thing (the thing?). Second, Social media – one can only see so many feathered flat whites or tattooed baristas before setting out to find a local one. (Does coffee taste better when poured by someone with strong forearms and intriguing thick-lined tattoos? I would argue yes.)
Thirdly Covid-19. Which you don’t want to read about because it probably scuppered your summer plans. But. It also knocked the wrench of power firmly out of the landlords’ hands and into those of tenants.
Coffee shops are in the best position to launch in an uncertain time like this. With their take-away profiles and their baked goods often bought in, they can whittle their business down to one employee / possibly the owner if things are extremely dire. They don’t usually have to since coffee is one indulgence most of us will grant ourselves.
Casa Taos is a coffee shop at first glance. Tucked up into a glass panelled alcove to the left in a large warehouse space in Poblenou. If the tables seem too nice to set a hot cup of coffee on, it’s because they are. Besides coffee, Casa Taos sells furniture, lighting, ceramics, bars of soap, and chocolate tablets.
If you sit there long enough, you will notice people walking through space to the passcode protected glass doors at the back and entering with the grizzly buzz. The rest of the building is home to the Apocapoc Nest City Lab.
You will often find Mireia behind the bar. Mireia used to work in fashion in London. The craft coffee pause was a fixture of her daily life. She brought along her sensibility for design, her interest in sustainability and herself. Women in craft coffee remain all too rare. She chose to work with SlowMov, with whom she shares a sustainable, fair-trade mindset alongside other local food producers and general artisans. Rather than list them here, I think you should visit Mireia’s space yourself and admire how she has curated it with what she loves.
Casa Taos Coffee
Carrer de Pere IV, 100, Sant Marti,
08005 Barcelona
taosliving.com
instagram.com/taos.living
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