The best places to have breakfast in Barcelona

Salty, sweet, knife and fork, Japanese, monumental sandwiches... Eat well in the morning!

https://www.timeout.es/barcelona/es/restaurantes/donde-desayunar-en-barcelona

Salty, sweet, knife and fork, Japanese, monumental sandwiches... Eat well in the morning! Maybe it's not the most important meal of the day, but having a good breakfast is basic to live a good life. Here you have a list made with love with a lot of places where you can go for breakfast without having to submit to the mental colonization of the ‘brunch’ (which however we like, and we have also contemplated it) and where you are guaranteed to start the day on the right foot.

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• Cafeteria Palmer

Against the satanic bakeries that nail you seven euros for a horrible coffee and a gum sandwich, the Palmer is synonymous with good coffee (Novell high-end) and memorable sandwiches, XL size and tiny price: premium bread, Serra bakery, and sausage and telluric bull displayed in whole pieces in a metal refrigerator.

Warm on the outside and inside, with a tall glass of café con leche they are lunchtime heaven. The list of snacks shines proudly from an illuminated sign: boar's head, sobrasada, sausages with cheese, canned sardines ... "It's an easy process, but it has to be done well. Everything is invented," says Josep Carrasco. His grandparents opened the cafeteria in 1944 and he has been running it since 1999. Solid and simple: Monday to Saturday, from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., sandwiches and coffee. Half of Poble-sec has breakfast here, so to speak. It is a meeting point for cilcistas who have breakfast like a muleteer.

• Bar Dole

  
  

Very small bar characterized by a loyal neighborhood clientele, an exceptional service and a very careful offer. Lunch is available at lunchtime (at the bar). Dole Café -or Dole bar, as you want to say- is much more than a bar: it is an institution for breakfast in Sant Gervasi! The facade is nimble and motley: a vintage bar with two rows of stools, and a plancha at the back that presides over the scene. The origin comes from Domingo -the father- and Leandro, the son, the couple who opened the establishment in June 1974 (today you will only find Leandro and his daughter Míriam, who reign at the bar with the sympathy and good treatment of someone who has been in the hotel business for half a century).

This longevity is self-explanatory: Dole is the bar for a good breakfast par excellence in Sarrià, and they are open from six in the morning! They base their tremendous charisma and direct gastro ‘sex appeal’ on a repertoire of hot and cold sandwiches that knock you on your ass. Like their mythical bacon and cheese flautín, a delirium of crispy and fatty goodness, or especially a section of tortillas that can be ordered on a plate or sandwich: potato and onion, garlic, zucchini, artichoke .... As if that weren't enough, all the pastries on display - except the croissants, by Sacha - are homemade, or do you think people like the Torres brothers eat breakfast anywhere?

• Funky Bakers Eatery

  
  

Funky Bakers opened in 2018 as a bakery and pastry shop -they both make you a superb sandwich and a pistachio croissant- and coffee shop. And it became a beloved place in the Born, as popular for the quality (everything made from scratch with top local product) as for the friendliness. So beloved and popular that the owner, Seyma Ozkaya, in 2022 opened Funky Eatery, the restaurant version.

You'll find a mix of Turkish heritage with the Mediterranean here, and the same work ethic. This is a versatile place at all times of the day. But they excel with the breakfast menu. On the one hand, you'll find an assortment of pastries and cakes made on site that has positioned them as one of Barcelona's great artisan bakeries, with delicacies made from scratch and made trendy by them - like the chocolate and hazelnut ‘babka’, that delicious Jewish sweet bread, or banana bread with tahini glaze. On the hot side, sandwiches prepared with in-house braided bread, served hot, are like a good brunch in sandwich format: like scrambled eggs, grilled seasonal vegetables, cheese and tomato sauce. The coffee is impeccable, specialty and well roasted.

• Bar La Camila

  
  

Camila occupies the wonderful space of indeterminacy of a good neighborhood bar: where you can have a coffee, a sandwich or a hot snack, and where you can be sure that you will be able to do it all with solvency. In contrast to the specialty coffee shops that want to trick you into a flat white for a penny, the owners are experienced baristas who are committed to coffee with milk. And the local produce is from the neighborhood: here you can enjoy juicy potato omelettes and croissants and pastries from La Nena, sandwiches with bread and boiled and cheese bought from local businesses. The place is beautiful: a neighborhood bar, tastefully and minimalistically redone.

• Bar Bodega Can Ros

  
  

Of those bars of all the life in which so much you can breakfast of fork, as to make the cafelito seated discreetly with the daily one, as to recharge the batteries with a powerful menu. In Can Ros there is always warmth. For breakfast: you will eat capipota, snails, croquettes, a meatball sandwich (yes, yes, meatballs!) Or a mythical artichoke omelette, one of those that you will remember forever and, if you want, then for breakfast! The funny thing is that you can go at any time, you will always have one thing or another to eat and you will never be hungry when you go out the door. At lunchtime they serve good home cooking with dishes like stewed lentils or battered cod, and don't miss the carajillo!

• Granja Petitbo

  
  

Walk up Passeig de Sant Joan and pause at Granja Petitbó. Step inside and you'll feel like you've taken refuge in a warm Norwegian bar while it's snowing outside. The Petitbó Farm is a cozy place where you can have breakfast and snacks of excellent cakes accompanied by a great cup of tea or a coffee of those that you never want it to end. A picture to frame or, if you prefer, a photo to show off on Instagram. Eggs Benedict and vegetable sandwiches accompanied by fruit juices (we like the orange, apple and carrot) and also their reputed carrot cake and pancakes with banana and chocolate... occupy the tables on weekends during their reputed brunch. At noon they do very healthy food.

• Lúkumas

  
  

One of the key places to have breakfast in Gràcia: this immaculate cafeteria is the meeting point of the liberal, modern and hipster professional with a good breakfast in the neighborhood. The Greek Pétros Paschalidis bakes every day, only with natural ingredients, the Hellenic version of the berlina: the Lúkuma. They sell them with all kinds of flavors and fillings, some as surprising as mastija, glazed with resin essence. Often they also do tests: lately I have seen square ‘lukumas’ or with Oreo ‘topping’.

• Picnic

  
  

With Jaime in the kitchen and Tara in the dining room, Picnic offers the possibility of a brunch, a trend that looks set to become a tradition with the permission of the posh. As I like modernity, from the brunch menu I choose some quinoa croquettes in the form of cubes, very well fried and crunchy. And since after Christmas and St. Stephen's Day it is very difficult to get over the meat monkey, I order the beef burger with salad, bacon and homemade potatoes in a cone. The bread, and it is appreciated, is very good and crunchy. No one has been able to answer the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.

• La Donuteria

  
  

Richard Bies, an American pastry chef by trade-he was head pastry chef at Escribá, among many other places-is the baker and owner of La Donuteria, a café-baker of artisanal berlinas. Every day he bakes about ten different flavors, which can be as surprising as mango chutney, coconut and curry, or crema catalana. He also has savory flavors, such as apple, bacon and maple syrup. They are large, dense pieces, light years away from the industrial product. This, in reality, is haute patisserie applied to the everyday product.

• Ugot

A gorgeous place where cynical posturing doesn't work: Ugot is like the tea room of the French aunt you never had. Israeli Adi Nachson has filled an old warehouse with soul, with crockery collected over the years, a beautifully restored floor and a miscellany of antique furniture. He calls it a bruncherie: you can have hearty and good breakfasts (eggs in all possible forms), curious and quality dishes of the day and homemade pastries made by Adi (‘Ugot’ is Hebrew for cake). And you will also find some Israeli dishes, such as shakshuka, spicy eggs with a strong spice. Breakfasts here are a pleasure.