Café La Habana

Café La Habana, on Avenida Morelos in Colonia Juárez, is one of the city's classic coffee houses and has been open since the early 1950s. Its fame rests on legend as much as on coffee. The story goes that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara met here while planning the Cuban Revolution, and the walls carry photographs and a plaque listing well-known patrons, including the writers Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño. Some of the staff have worked here for decades and are happy to share the café's stories.

The room itself is part of the appeal: high ceilings, fans that always seem to be turning, and muted brown tones that make it feel like an old photograph. Time Out described it as little changed since it opened. Time Out's 2014 review gave it three stars out of five and placed its prices in the moderate band. Today the customers are more likely to be office workers from the area than revolutionaries or poets, and the café keeps its role as a neighbourhood meeting place.

The coffee is roasted and ground on site from beans from Veracruz, and you can buy it by the kilo to take home. Try the café habana, an espresso with condensed milk, or the café bombón. Food runs from an executive lunch menu to pastas and tortas, and the house speciality is the torta cubana, a roll stuffed with roast pork, beef milanesa, eggs, chorizo, ham and cheese. According to The Infatuation, the name comes from Castro's habit of ordering "a torta with everything". Time Out also recommended the queso fundido.

It suits history-minded travellers, writers and anyone who wants a long, unhurried coffee in a setting with character. It works as well for a quick espresso as for a full lunch; allow 30 minutes for coffee or an hour for a meal. Visit outside the office lunch rush if you want a quieter table.

The café is in Colonia Juárez, close to Juárez Metro station and the Metrobús stops at Juárez and Glorieta de Colón on Paseo de la Reforma. A Soho House now operates next door, a sign of how much the neighbourhood has changed around this old institution.