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Rating: Standard, low-end Roman coffee
Well, here’s what a marketing manager would not want to happen to their brand: To debase it. But take a look at this fabulous cafe.
Not sure what country you might be in, looks like La Havana, Cuba, or maybe, some place in India (not that I have anything against these wonderful places), but only that it looks- third world. And that’s the charm for many tourists coming to Rome, third-world shabby chic knowing that you’re in the lap of European civilization. Go figure. This place is right next to the City of Rome government building, and is dilapidated. But very friendly, the two usually go together. The place was formed by a large room with a bar covering one whole corner of it and the other corner was full of tables. They had a TV blaring nonsense and lots, really lots of folk inside having coffee.
Asking for a coffee in this place got the following:
Presentation: Interesting cup, it was wrapped in a fancy logo- it said A F Caffè, who knows what this was, but maybe it was the cafe’s name before? Either way, the cup was quite large for an espresso. It was clean, and yet the spoon gave me a sensation of uncleanliness, even though it was actually clean. Maybe because it’s been washed 1 million times.. I don’t know. Maybe because the place’s floor was quite dirty, and it was packed with so much stuff, I can’t explain it.
Temperature of Cup: It was good. It was rather cold outside that day and the cup’s temperature was not scalding, nor tepid. Nice and warm complementing the coffee.
Quantity: It was a large shot, in a large cup. Maybe it was probably just a bit longer than a normal shot of espresso, but it gave the sensation of being very long.
Temperature: It was good. Hot, not scalding, and played perfectly off the cup’s temperature, just as it should be.
Volume/Consistency: It was thin, watery, runny and cutting. Can I add more to this? To be honest, no.
Crema: It was thin, persistent, had some signs of extra-dark (i.e., extra-bitter) coffee oil in it. It was a bit caky and glossy. Altogether what a coffee exec who doesn’t drink coffee to save his life, would think coffee crema ‘should’ look like.
Odor: Nope, and since it was Tazza d’Oro that they were brewing, I doubt I would smell anything pleasant.
Taste: It was extra bitter, more than I expected. Coupled with the thinness of the coffee, it aimed to create a cut in my stomach- the same type of feeling the workers at the government office aim to give each client they ‘help’ at the window they man.
Overall: The things going for it were the temperature and the size, other than that, it was thin, bitter nearing rancidness, and thin, sharp, cutting. Ifinished it because it wasn’t altogether impossible, but it wasn’t definitely a ‘great’ espresso, nor a normal espresso. It was crappy and simply showed no care for what they were serving. However, if you ask them, like any good Roman store owner, they’ll own up to it by saying: this is how good Roman coffee is supposed to be. Yup, and I swallowed that line too because I paid for the coffee and finished it!
The setup: I couldn’t see what type of machine they had, nor grinder. It was completely hidden by all the rubbish they had on the counters. If you look at the picture below you glimpse it through the Crik Crok bags, looks like a E-61 based machine and maybe a Wega? The coffee was supposedly Tazza D’Oro they had some posters inside that I wanted to photograph but didn’t. It was so packed with people that whenever I pointed my camera both the baristas and the clients looked at me as if I was going to get beat up… so, when in Rome… pull your head down and obey like everybody does!
Bar Tazza d’Oro,
B.C.L. S.A.S. di Leone Fabio & C.
Via Ostiense 133C
00154 Roma
Tel. 06 57 59 085