Sula Espai

Five espressos and six filters

The coffee board is the giveaway. Five espressos rotate here, one of them decaf, alongside six coffees for manual filter brewing, which is an unusual amount of choice for a neighbourhood room this size. Sula Espai runs as a multiroaster, so nothing is tied to one house roast and the bar can pour several different roasters in an afternoon. The equipment follows the ambition: an under-counter Modbar espresso system with Mythos grinders and an EK Omnia, chosen for consistency and clean service across coffees that behave differently from one another. The rest of the concept is in the full name, a café and a place for small glasses of wine, which is exactly how the day runs.

An open bar in Sants

The bar has no walls or barriers, so the barista and the guest end up in conversation whether or not either planned on it, and the under-counter machinery makes the whole thing feel closer to a home kitchen than a café bar. The team came out of roasteries and specialty coffee shops and opened this as the warm, regulars-centred place they felt Sants was missing, somewhere to slow down and connect rather than to queue and leave. The room was designed around that idea, with the layout arranged so grinding, extraction and service flow without breaking eye contact, and menu, music and design pulling in the same direction whether you are working, meeting a friend, or sitting alone for half an hour.

Order the vegan sobrasada bikini

For food, start with the vegan sobrasada bikini. It is the most specific savoury thing on the board and it fits the room exactly: a toasted sandwich rethought without meat, sitting between the specialty coffee and the vegan sweets. Pair it with coffee to see why this is more than a standard casual stop, choosing between the five rotating espressos, one decaffeinated, and the six coffees brewed by hand. Homemade pastry is the other dependable anchor, and there are vegan options across both the savoury and sweet sides. If the visit turns toward wine, low-intervention bottles carry equal weight here rather than being an afterthought, so an order can move three ways and still be true to the place: bikini, pastry, and either an espresso, a filter or a glass. European Coffee Trip listed it in the 2025 awards.