Best coffee in Calpe, Moraira and Jávea

Pull up a lounger. This one starts with a buenos días and ends with a cortado, which is a very Costa Blanca North way to spend a morning.

If you are like me, a bad cup can ruin the day before the croissant has even arrived. Bitter, thin, burnt at the edges, the kind that makes your mouth hurt and then pretends it was “strong.” YUCK!

Years ago I worked in a coffee roaster’s in Watford. Not a glamorous sentence, but it is where I learned the difference. High-grown arabica that smells like it has somewhere to go. The Jamaican end of the shelf, the one people treat like jewellery. And the other stuff: over-roasted, tired, left on a hot plate until it tastes of the machine. You do not forget that once you have stood next to the freshly roasted bags.

So this is not a list of whoever has the best Instagram wall between Calpe and Jávea. It is where I actually go when I want the morning to start with a cup I love and a tostada I need, and no speech about “notes of jasmine” unless the cup has earned it.

The coast will still do you a perfectly fine café con leche. Sometimes that is the right order. Sometimes you want the bean to have come from higher up than the Peñón, and not to taste like last week’s filter. Both exist on this road. You have to know which door you walked through.

Nostro, Arenal and the port

If I am on Arenal or walking the port, and I want the cup to be the point, Nostro is the place. The coffee comes out creamy. The milk and the shot actually talk to each other, and it does not turn bitter halfway down. That is rarer than the boards outside the door would have you believe. Sit in if the chairs are dry. Take it to the promenade if October has other ideas. Either way, it is one of the few cups on this stretch I would order twice.

Arenal is Avenida de la Llibertat 15. The port door is Carrer Joan Fuster 2. Beans, if the morning went well: nostrocoffeeroasters.com

78 Sabores y Copas, Avenida Juan Carlos I, Calpe

This is the seafront one. You are paying for the Peñón, and I don’t mind, because the coffee still comes out creamy and they will do you a long breakfast if the morning has already decided to be slow. I go when I want the rock in the frame and a cup I will actually finish. October is the point of it: the terrace is there, the August queue is not. If the wind is up, take the inside table. A good La Fossa choice.

78 Sabores y Copas on the map

Caffè Milano, calle de Burdeos

This is the one that makes sense to me, because they roast in the shop. I spent long enough next to bags in Watford to know the difference between a bean roasted down the corridor and one that has been sitting in a hopper since August. Milano is the first kind. Italian house, focaccia if you are hungry, coffee that still smells like coffee when it hits the cup. Not creamy in the Nostro way. Cleaner. Fresher. The sort of cup I order when I want to remember why I ever learned any of this. Take a bag home if the morning went well. That is the point of a roaster.

Calle Burdeos 9. caffemilano.coffee

Cafetería Vipan, Carrer de les Tosqueres

Vipan is the Moraira morning when I do not want to get back in the car. Bakery at the back, coffee at the table, terrace if October is behaving. The cup is a proper café, not a thimble, and the pastry case is the reason you stay for a second one. Useful if you are between Calpe and Jávea and Moraira was the plan all along.

Cafetería Vipan on the map

La Cena by Nola — Calpe, Moraira, Altea, Albir

This is not the roaster stop. This is the morning that has already decided to be slightly naughty. Coffee, with a side of Baileys and cream, and I do not apologise for it. The cup is sweet, the cream is the point, and it is the opposite of the bitter machine coffee that used to make my mouth hurt in Watford. Sit outside if the heaters are on and the weather is behaving. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, and some mornings the wrong coffee is the right one.

Calpe is Calle Letonia. Moraira is in la avenida de la Paz, 26. The others are on their site: lacenabynola.es

So that is the run. Calpe, Moraira, Jávea. The counter cup, the roaster, the seafront chair, and the one with Baileys and cream when the morning has already gone off-script.

I have missed places. I always do. Someone is drinking a better cortado than mine right now, two streets back from the one I wrote down, and they have not told me. That is the deal with coffee on this coast. The good cup turns up where you were not looking.

If you have a favourite café or bar I should try — Calpe, Jávea old town, the Arenal, a bar that still does the coffee before it does the toast — tell me. Name, town, and whether the cup is creamy, clean, or just honest. I will go. I worked next to the bags long enough to know when a recommendation is real.

If this saved you a bitter start, the terrace runs on coffee too.

Buy me a coffee

Until then, enjoy the morning. We might be at the next table.

Joanne Sun Sea Sangria