Yari's Route

What makes this one worth the detour is where the bikes go: a rack inside the room, and owners who want your bike there. You wheel it in, lean it up with the others and eat where you can see it. Anyone who has ridden somewhere on good wheels knows the difference between that and a lamp post across the street, and knows how many places that call themselves cycling cafés still send you outside. Here nobody has to ask.

The rest holds its end up. It is a brunch counter rather than a bar with a coffee machine: toast with smoked salmon and walnuts, pancakes, filled baguettes, cakes made in the back, and a dining room with a plant wall that looks like nowhere else in the Empordà. Four and a half stars across more than four hundred reviews, and cyclists is the word that turns up most often in them.

Verges sits on the flat between the Ter and the Montgrí, in range of any Empordà morning. It is the stop for a group that wants to sit down for half an hour, not drink a coffee standing up.