Salzillo tea and coffee

Salzillo is a Murcian tea and coffee house, and its Alicante counter sits inside the Mercado Central on Avenida Alfonso X El Sabio, in the building where the city does its food shopping. That location sets the rhythm: it opens at eight and closes at half past two, three on Fridays and Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays. You buy tea here on the way past the fishmonger, not on an afternoon outing.

The list is organised the way a Spanish tea merchant organises one: orígenes puros, blends tradicionales, biológicos, desteinados, aromatizados, and then separate sections for infusiones, rooibos and mate. Almost everything is sold in a single 125 g bag rather than a ladder of sizes, which makes the prices unusually easy to compare — 6,53 € buys English Breakfast, English Afternoon or Lapsang Souchong, and 5,81 € buys the Gunpowder.

Two items on the list are the reason we would send somebody here rather than to a chain. One is a yellow tea, a family that most shops in Spain never order from their suppliers at all. The other is loose yerba mate, which sits in its own section and is close to unheard of on a tea counter in Alicante. Around them the list still covers the expected ground — Darjeeling in two grades, a Pu Erh, a Snow Bud white, a dark oolong and an organic Chun Mee.