Best cafés

Ten cafés in Torre del Mar carry a public rating, with more than 4,300 reviews between them. Several are cafés and cake shops at once, which is the traditional format on this coast.

A tight table

The first two are separated by a few tenths of a point, and they get there by opposite routes: one on a high rating with a couple of hundred opinions, the other on a slightly lower rating across more than a thousand. Both are long standing addresses in the centre.

Coffee here has its own vocabulary

Asking for "a coffee" will get you a question back. In this part of Andalusia you order by the proportion of milk: solo is espresso, cortado a dash of milk, café con leche half and half, manchado mostly milk. In summer, café con hielo arrives as a hot espresso and a separate glass of ice, which you pour it over yourself.

Breakfast is bread, not pastry

The standard breakfast here is a toasted mollete or half a roll with olive oil, crushed tomato and often ham, taken at the bar between eight and eleven, and it is cheap. The pastries exist but they are not what the town eats on a working morning.