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Rating: Standard, run-of-the-mill Roman coffee
The Profumo Piera Bar Cafe, in the Magliana Portuense area, is a small, tucked away place that amazes you when you walk in. You have to take a short flight of stairs downwards as the locale is a bit blow ground level. When you walk in into this den-like place, you’re hit over the head by amazing looking pastries that are begging you to buy them so you can dig your teeth into all of them. It’s chock full of really a lot of variety, and all from a really unassuming store front. I guess you have to be a local to really know it exists. Looking it up online finds few, if any traces of a presence. Yet somehow, here it also manages to mysteriously eek out a living. Normally I only go to places that have ‘Bar’ or Coffee in their name. This place, had ‘Bar’ first, so I thought, hey, coffee is important for them also. Let’s see what they do.
Asking for a coffee towards the right hand side of the thin-narrow walking space that’s inside, I got the following:
Presentation: The cup was clean, spotless, the spoon a little oversized for the size of cup. But given that it’s a pastry shop too… I guess they like to indulge in their sugar, no? No water was offered, but I’m sure the young tuff looking barista would have obliged.
Temperature of Cup: Wow was it hot! Yup, I’m deep in a Roman coffee experience! hold on tight folks, here we go!!!
Quantity: It was abundant. Large cup, long espresso. Almost half of the cup, and since the cup is abundant, we’re going in for the long haul. Yes, here at this cafe you have to take your coffee with something sweet, sumptuous, you need a counter balance to it.
Temperature: Still hot as hell. I didn’t burn myself, because I’ve developed a big callus on my tongue from all the scalding espressos I’ve had already, but still, hot as hell…
Volume/Consistency: I will admit, it was silky silky. Not thick, nor runny, but quite narrow in its gamut of density. It had a ribbony satiny texture to it. Interesting.
Crema: Yeah, picture perfect. Like fresh varnish. 3/4 dark, with a bit of light to show me that the espresso was a bit too long. It was even, thinnish, and persistent.
Odor: nooope. Not here, this is Roman coffee we’re dealing with!
Taste: No profundity. No depth, and not rancid either. It was bitter as we all can expect, but the taste was flat, a little too stale for my liking.
Overall: It was a decent, normal, cookie cutter Roman coffee. Not bad I would say.
The setup: What is this machine? I hadn’t seen it before, at least I don’t remember. It looks like some Astoria. But it wasn’t. It is a Lira two group machine made by BFC S.R.L. This is a cool hand made machine by a company that’s in the Veneto area of Italy (Between Treviso and Udine). Go figure, it was cool! The grinder looked like an Astoria. The coffee being served was Caffè Fantini which, was I’ve remarked here before, is a local Roman roaster. It’s been signaled out as a ‘very Roman’ coffee by folks I’ve met at different bars… so go figure!
Profumo Piera
Bar Pasticceria
Via Guido Miglioli 3
00149 Roma