El Cafetero¶
Warsaw, Poland
El Cafetero is a family-run specialty roastery in the middle of Warsaw, where the roaster, the cafe and a patisserie all share one address. Konrad is the headroaster, and he trained under Scandinavian coffee expertise before turning the obsession into a business. The story also runs the opposite way to the usual one: rather than inheriting the trade, he pulled his father into it, and the two of them now run it together, with his father baking everything on the pastry side. A PRL-era market scale that once belonged to the family still sits in the shop, weighing beans.
Everything is roasted on site in small batches, with a profile built for each individual lot rather than a single house curve, aiming to open up the chocolate, nutty, fruity or floral side of a given bean instead of flattening it. Green coffee is bought directly from growers they have vetted, across Guatemala, Honduras, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Colombia, Peru and Tanzania, with traceability to the farm and ethical, sustainable sourcing stated as the standard rather than a selling point.
The range is organised by how the coffee is meant to be brewed: a lighter filter line, a darker espresso line, and a RESERVE LIMITED tier reserved for rare microlots, unusual botanical varieties and experimental processing bought in small seasonal quantities. There are two Warsaw cafes, on Emilii Plater and on Marszalkowska by Plac Zbawiciela.