Tarannà (CLOSED)

Sometimes you need desperately to find a place that is your lifeline at any time of day. Tarannà is one of those miracles that suddenly appear in your life. A secret lifeboat amid a wreck. A dream place where getting up off your chair is pure drama, sitting down again, a life-sustaining need.

Decorated with simplicity and sophistication, this space is left wanting by a combination of wood, brick and white tile, enhanced by a Wimbledon green. The claustrophobic can get out onto the terrace, where hours can pass you by, but what do you care, reading your comic book and smoking your cigarettes.

Inside all is calm, with soft music, community wooden tables, vintage Scandinavian-style chairs and a divine window that's open when the weather's fine, and where the most indecisive of patron can sit half inside and half outside (like Federal Café on C/Parlament).

Tarannà is a special place. The light is magnificent in the afternoon, no joke. When night falls, there's nothing like ordering one of the many beers on the menu to go with an organic chicken and avocado sandwich, my favourite. Breakfast, vermouth, lunch, gorgeously sweet snacks, dinner, quality drinks... The combination of versatility, modernity, quality and simplicity, and surprisingly attentive and fast service make it impossible not to be seduced by this oasis. The ideal is served up once again in Sant Antoni. I think I'm in love.