Fédéral Café, Madrid

Having lived in France for 11 months now, there are a few things I have started to miss about good ol’ Sydney town, the most important being good coffee and café breakfasts. Now don’t get me wrong, French food is bloody delicious! But there’s nothing quite as good as two poached eggs on crispy sourdough on a Sunday morning. So being in Madrid with a fellow Sydney-sider who shared my passion for aforementioned breakfasts, we set off to find Spain’s closest thing at Fédéral Café.

Tucked away in the rather trendy district of Malsaña, Fédéral Café was set-up in Madrid by fellow Australians wanting to bring delicious coffee and brekkie to Spain. And nobody could be happier about that than, of course, Australians. Stepping into the café, it was clear that the Spaniards are pretty happy about it too, with us two being the only tourists around. With its trendy and beautifully decorated interior, this place has definitely found its market in Madrid, being one of the very few places that will serve you anything other than toast for desayunos (breakfast in Spanish-look at me go!).

Overjoyed with our finding, we were greeted by a fairly nice Spanish waitress, with an emphasis on the fairly (who can blame them when they all go to sleep at 3am?). Anyway we were way too excited for breakfast that we paid little notice. Said waitress seated us on a shared table (how rustic) with both hipster individuals blogging away on their Apple laptops, and business men and women discussing future projects while sipping on their macchiatos. It felt like home.

Full of excitement, we started with a macchiato and a latte (followed by another macchiato by me #coffeeproblem), accompanied by a banana smoothie. Can we get more Australian? We were immediately brought back to Sunday morning in Sydney, sipping on our macchiatos while reading Sunday and people watching. Life was just about to get better.

We started off with probably the greatest breakfast combination ever decided: french toast with dark chocolate and caramelised bananas. Not usually a french toast consumer, I just couldn’t say no to this concoction made by the food gods themselves. The bananas were sticky and sweet, slightly off-set by the bitterness of the dark chocolate, and then reinforced by the oozy maple syrup. The only slight criticism I can give this bad boy is the use of bread, hoping more for a brioche-style base. But the taste made any doubts quickly disappear.

The incredible french toast was followed by the standard Aussie breakfast: poached eggs on sourdough with haloumi, spinach and bacon. Even though this looks pretty basic for all you Australians, this type of breakfast is groundbreaking in Europe, and was definitely welcomed with wide-open mouths. Again, one slight teething problem was that the eggs were slightly over-poached. But hey, we’re in Spain!

Lets just say we were very happy with our breakfast find and could not recommend this enough for all the Australians living in Spain (they have another café in Barcelona) and seriously missing the breakfasts we’ve all taken for granted. If only they could move to France… X

Fédéral Café
Plaza de las Comendadoras 9
Hours: Monday to Thursday 8am-12am, Friday to Saturday 9am-1pm, Sunday 9am-5:30pm
Price: $$