Old Town Coffee — Restaurant in San Sebastián

OldTownCoffee in 2019 ( recommendation by a great coffee roaster Javier of Sakona in Irun) and we fell in love with this place. A day spent in town always starts here at least till this day 04,November 2024.

Location: On a quiet street behind the San Martin Cathedral. If you show up at 9 o’clock on that street, you can not miss it !

Atmosphere: The OldTownCoffee team is like a family who takes great care of their customers and themselves. There is no tension or competition or any other issue among themselves. This makes them unique; this makes us happy!

Coffee: I used to love their double-cappuccino as part of my breakfast until switched to V60s. It has been a game between me and my husband to find the beans we both love the most. We always give them our honest opinions ( which could be considered criticism by other baristas or waiters )—— they listen and never argue. And starting 2023, they have selected and roasted some amazing beans, taking my current favorite as an example, the Ethiopian Banko Gotiti , it simply beats my other favorites : Honeymoon by Dak, Yirgacheffe by Terredecafé and 2 by La Cabra and El Paraiso # 1 by Kawa).

Food: My ultimate lover of the menu is The Lot composed of sourdough toast topped with beautiful avocado, jambon, tomato purée, delicious olive oil and parsley sauce , oh, and some sea salt flakes . My husband loves the salmon on toast ( instead of bagel) the most. We are always hungry in the morning so I take these 2 biggest ones. In the past I had a lot of the avocado on toast and loved it. Their menu is designed by a chef who used to work for Martin Berasatetui.

Other F&B: as we always try to be the first customers in the morning, we see their suppliers bring in fresh produce: tomatoes and avocados, croissants and cinnamon rolls , and recently they have added amazing açaì to their menu, boy, that is beautiful and delicious! ( Lots of people do not know what açaì is till they taste it here! ) I am aware that orange juice, yogurt bowl and chai latte is frequently ordered but I only have one stomach .

Service: these ‘chicos’ are always polite. Every single customer is greeted when they enter the coffeeshop. Sometimes we take good service for granted and we only notice those moments that are not pleasant. Here there is no unpleasant moment ( or at least based on my own experience). One year I forgot to bring my own V60 and I wanted to buy one from them . One of the 3 partners apologised,’ I don’t sell them anymore but here is one if you are willing to take it.’ Another year I ran out of paper filters and was planning to buy a pack, one of the 3 ( I forgot who) simply put a bunch of them in front of me. That was it. No word, just a smile. All these little gestures add up and I feel grateful to have discovered this place and it is alway the daily starting point of our vacations in San Sebastián! I sincerely wish they could open their second shop in my neighborhood in the Marais in Paris! Hint hint !!!!!!!!! Anyways, I will be ordering their Banko Gotigo beans online with no shipping cost from now on! To improve: open...

This review is probably going to show how much of a San Franciscan I am. It’s the only specialty coffee shop in the area, so of course I’m drawn to it like a moth to fire.

Cold brew to go: tasty, but came in a tiny cup with one large ice cube. Couldn’t tell if it was done iced latte style or actually cold brewed, but my palate isn’t refined enough to tell the difference sometimes.

Flat white with oat milk: creamy and delicious.

Cappuccino: very tasty, but more creamy than foamy. Couldn’t tell much of a difference from the flat white, which means either I’m bad at this or the way they make the two are pretty much the same.

V60 with Colombian beans: I asked for the lower acidity option between their Colombian and Peruvian brews, and went with the Colombian. My palate is refined enough here to tell that this is some realllllyyy smooth brew. There’s still a pretty strong acidic aftertaste, but I guess this is all relative.

Single origin espresso with Colombian beans: okay yeah, this is pretty amazing. Very little acidic aftertaste.

Cortado: perfectly balanced. My favorite drink with milk here.

The Lot: compared to SF, this is reasonably priced, but I can see why people would complain about how expensive this avocado tomato jamon toast is. I found it to be portioned just right, and the flavors were wonderful. I do have one minor complaint: the toast is impossible to slice. I used to rock climb for years and unless I’ve gotten horribly out of shape during covid, or I just hold my knife wrong, but by the end of meal my left pointer finger was actually sore from attempting to saw through the crust. Maybe this is the price to pay for perfectly crispy toast, but wow this was hilariously challenging. The whole time I thought I would send my plate flying if I were to try and slice any harder. Final strategy: slice off and eat the crust first. Or maybe just ask for a...

Excellent coffee with great service. I got both a cappuccino and a doble espresso here and I was very impressed with flavor and quality with both. If you go walking around San Sebastián you’ll notice that Old Town Coffee is the only place is packed to the brim every morning with a 5-20 minute wait to get coffee/breakfast. This is no coincidence! I can’t speak to the quality of the food, but I’m very happy with the coffee I got here.

The milk texture for the cappuccino was impressively uniform and the addition of cacao makes for a nice pattern on top. I appreciate that I was asked if I wanted cacao or not since many shops will add in a flavor like this without asking first; good customer service here! The espresso was also great- the barista was nice enough to give me a double with an Ethiopia natural instead of the standard washed and the flavor profile was insane! Very well balanced espresso and great work by the barista. Overall, great coffee and would...