LAB Tostadores de Café

LAB opened in 2014 as one of the first Buenos Aires roasteries built around specialty lots, started by Alexis Zagdañski and Paula Zyssholtz as a laboratory for developing small batch profiles for restaurants and cafés. The Humboldt address in Palermo Hollywood still works that way: a roastery with a coffee shop and training centre attached, where amateurs and professionals take courses and anyone can taste the whole range brewed with modern extraction methods.

Coffee is the star at the bar, where the roasting team pours its own lots as espresso and filter. Cacao is a second passion, since LAB makes its own bean to bar chocolate under the sister Cacao Roasters name, and a kitchen feeds the room. There is outdoor seating for lingering, and bags of beans and chocolate to carry home.