CARRA TORREFAZIONE E BAR CAFFÈ, VIA TUSCOLANA 577, 00175 ROMA

Rating: Standard, good upper range Roman roaster and coffee

On the Tuscolana, heading out of Rome and along the southern part of the Metro Line A (right on the Porta Furba – Quadrado exit), you find the Carra Torrefazione e Bar Caffè. Its in an older, 1920s building and at first seems a not so big, but then you realize that there’s a pure ‘merchandizing’ store on the right, and becomes quite an impressive complex. Since the roaster is from 1929, it might be the original occupants of the building when it was first built. Depending on what door you chose to walk into, you’re faced by the coffee roasting counter where all the three different mixes are displayed. Then towards the back is the bar and coffee machine. The staff is friendly, and this is a very typical Roman locale that’s non touristy. The perks of the place are a rather large interior with sofas and tables to hide from the hot sun, free Wi-Fi (those of you living here in Rome know this is RARE!) and large selection of things to eat with the coffee.

Asking for a cup of coffee got me this:

Presentation: Nice round cup, no water offered, clean, and a nice drip to show it was being milked with another coffee ordered at the same time.

Temperature of Cup: Boy, it was extremely hot. This is staunchly traditional Roman!

Quantity: Given the very large size of the shot, it was a small espresso, this was good.

Temperature: It was very hot, and you’ll see why.

Volume/Consistency: It was watery… I was sad, but then it got silkier as I drank more of it.

Crema: It was bubbly… so it was over-extracted, and thin, not persistent, and only slightly complex in character.

Odor: Ah! I was pleasantly surprised. It had a faint smell of smoke and dark roasted wood.

Taste: It was very bitter, as expected, but very mild, it turned out to be a light coffee, not offensive, not rancid. And not poor.

Overall: Given that it became silky after the midway point, and the lingering smoky flavor of the roast still infusing the nose while I drank it, I would say that this is one of the better Roman roasters in Rome so far!

The setup: It was nice, they had a Nuova Simonelli 4-group espresso machine and a grinder that I couldn’t really see.

The coffee was the following:

1) A ‘Brazilian’ blend, that was at 15 Euro a kilo, this was their ‘stronger blend and it was the one being served.

2) A ‘African’ blend, that was 13 Euro a kilo, this was their ‘softer’ blend.

3) A ‘decaf’ blend, at 17.50 Euro a kilo.

I asked the lady, that in my opinion formed part of the family business, about the coffee blends, etc. and all she said was that it was a stronger and less stronger blends. She couldn’t give me info on the sources, types of beans, etc.

As usual here in Rome these roasts were left in open air. These vitrines are just to show the coffee itself and are not full, but a facade for the coffee bins inside.

I’m sure if I would have asked how often they roast, they would have said ‘weekly’ as others. But I didn’t ask because the person didn’t seem very informed.

I purchased a 100 grams of the Brazilian blend, this is how you receive it:

Examining the beans you see the following:

A mix of two types of roasts, darker roasted beans mixed with lighter roast. The coffee had a very faint smell of dark roast smell, woody just like in the bar.

Preparing it for the home test, I ground them myself with the following results:

I didn’t spend too much time dialing in the grinds, but I ground it as I would other lighter blend coffees, so with this caveat:

the shot started frothing quite quickly, the temperature was on the low side ca. 91-92 degrees.

Crema was light, even, the grounds could have been ground a bit tighter.

The result was quite silky, deeply bitter, without any fruity overtones… as expected.

For not being a third wave espresso, this was OK, and again, on the upper end of small scale roasters here in Rome.

The interior is quite large as I mentioned. To the left there is a kind of ‘tobacco’ shop were you can post bets, buy smokes and other things. This is typical of how ‘cafes’ eek out a living here in Rome.

To the left of the Cafe is a shop that sells a really large variety of coffee related things: sweets, coffee again, chocolates, and paraphernalia aimed as gifts, etc.