The Best Cafes with Outdoor Seating in Buenos Aires

Full City Coffee House has been around for a while, making it one of the stalwarts of the contemporary Buenos Aires coffee scene. It goes beyond standard cortados and brings cafe-goers speciality coffee from Colombia made by friendly and talented baristas who are as passionate about crafting the perfect coffee as Full City’s clients are about drinking it. Recently extended, their Palermo premises now has a beautiful leafy patio and terrace with tiered wooden seating upstairs so you can tan while you drink coffee and chat.

The newest addition to Buenos Aires’ cafe landscape, La Noire Cafe is located on a quiet street in the low-key Chacarita neighbourhood, and is emblematic of this barrio – eclectic, charming and under-the-radar. The cute space is tastefully furnished with mid-century furniture and frame photographs, and it has an open air patio inside, or if you prefer, you can take your coffee curbside to the bench out the front.

New Yorker Jacob has been peddling his delicious bagels from a mobile operation outside existing cafes to the masses for a few years now, but he recently planted roots in Palermo Soho by opening his own eponymous cafe. Sheikob’s Bagels has a prime location in the trendy heartland of Buenos Aires, and now you can enjoy a bagel in the covered patio area of his bagel-centric shop, where you are likely to bump into some of the city’s fellow bagel lovers.

This cafe is a Colegiales staple, and is a favourite among locals living in the barrio. Seating inside is good, but seating outside is better. A perfect place to enjoy a salad and lemonade on a spring or summer day, Loreto is also a good place to get some work done if you go after the lunch rush about 3pm.

This Palermo Soho bookshop is located in an old casa chorizo, a particular type of Buenos Aires building that has an internal patio. Libros del Pasaje have stuck a roof over the patio to turn it into an internal oasis with an external feel. Lots of people come to work here during the day, giving it a studious atmosphere exaggerated by the fact that you are surrounded by books. A great spot for academics and bookworms.

This French cafe in the San Telmo market doesn’t exactly have outside seating, but its tables sprawl outside the cafe proper to take up plenty of space inside the market itself. The pastries, coffee and dishes on the menu all taste like they’ve been imported directly from Paris, and Merci is the perfect place to while away an hour or so people watching both locals and tourists who are passing through the market.

One of the city’s favourite bares notables, or heritage cafes, El Federal takes up a prominent corner in San Telmo and has some prime real estate in terms of outdoor seating. Order a cortado and tostado and sit either in the window inside or at a table on the periphery and watch the world go by as Argentines have done in this cafe for decades.