Why go
From a cart to the Poblenou counter
Jordi Mestre set Nomad’s coffee cart in motion in London in 2011; now Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, he shapes Nomad Frutas Selectas in Barcelona through the company’s roasting and café work. The branch sits on Carrer de Pujades, 95, in Poblenou, under the Frutas Selectas by Nomad Coffee name used for this address. Mestre’s place here is not framed as a daily barista station so much as the strategic hand behind the method: selection, roasting, quality control, and the kind of service that keeps the cup at the center of the room. Nomad’s public history traces the move from London through Madrid and into Barcelona, where the company established NOMAD COFFEE LAB in 2014, then opened ROASTER’S HOME in Poblenou in 2015 as its first public roastery location. Frutas Selectas belongs to that Barcelona chapter. Its lineage is company lineage, built from a cart, a lab, a roastery, and a series of cafés that made specialty coffee the working discipline rather than a decorative note.
Beans chosen before the cup
The program at Frutas Selectas rests on carefully selected, in-house roasted coffee, with traceability treated as part of the service rather than a back-room claim. The café does not publish branch-level brew parameters, machine models, or a fixed list of origins for this address, so the more useful reading is in the sequence: green coffee chosen within Nomad’s buying culture, roasting handled inside the company, service calibrated to the bean, and food kept close enough to support rather than distract. The menu is described around fresh, balanced dishes; other accounts point to bread, fresh fruit, lunch options, home baked cookies, and takeaway by Caravanmade. That is a café program with a clear hierarchy. Coffee leads. The counter follows with things that can hold their own beside an espresso or filter without asking the cup to become secondary. Nomad’s wider history also notes signature drinks at another Barcelona site in 2016, which matters less as a promise of what appears here than as evidence of the company’s habit of testing coffee beyond the straight serve.
A redesigned room for working and lingering
The room was recently redesigned by Skye Maunsell and Jordi Veciana, and the effect is practical before it is decorative: a welcoming, functional café where people gather, work, drink, and stay through lunch. Poblenou gives the place its rhythm. The counter carries the transaction, but the room is built for a slower second act, the table after the cup, the laptop beside the plate, the conversation held at a conversational level. Descriptions of the interior lean cozy, vintage, modern, and quietly stylish; none of that matters without the bench discipline behind it. At Frutas Selectas, the design gives the coffee program enough space to be read. The cup arrives from a roastery culture close by, and the room lets it settle.
Recognition without changing the station
Frutas Selectas has drawn specialist coffee-guide attention, including placement in The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops, while remaining a daytime café built around the same essentials: roasted coffee, a capable counter, and food that meets the cup rather than competes with it. If there is a next movement to hold in view, it is not a launch date or a larger room. It is the continuing fit between Mestre’s company method and the Poblenou counter at Carrer de Pujades, 95.
