Check back soon
Once posts are published, you’ll see them here.
Rating: Standard, mid-to low range Roman coffee
Right next to the Palace of Congresses and the Medieval and Ethnographic museums of Rome you find the Columbus Caffè Bar. It’s the typical Roman cafe cum everything else you can imagine, that is, as you can see on their webpage, it is a pizzeria, a restaurant, a sandwich bar, a laboratory for sweets, a catering service and of course, a cafe bar! It’s got to be good at one of these, either way, the locale is big, and I walked in only because of two things: The name was Caffè Columbus and they had a roasting machine right next to the front door. The staff was extra friendly, extra-nice, and you’ll get treated as if you’re they’re family. A nice change from areas like the Pantheon down-town.
The bar has two sides, and the espresso machine faces the back of the locale, so I walked around the rather large bar to find about four other souls having their coffee, I asked for mine and presented my receipt and tip:
Presentation: Nice round rather large cup. It was clean, crisp and looked slightly vintage somehow. The porcelain was thin, and I liked that. The spoon fit the cup. No water was offered.
Temperature of Cup: It was rather warm, not boiling. I’m on a lucky roll with good temperature coffee lately!
Quantity: It was a full rather long espresso shot. It was early in the morning and the barista didn’t want to disappoint.
Temperature: It was warm, not too hot. I felt it was right for this espresso. Good, not scalding. Again, another plus!
Volume/Consistency: Well, the temperature didn’t do it’s magic, maybe it should have been a bit warmer, or rather, colder! it was a thin, raspy coffee, that left much to be desired in terms of presence in the mouth.
Crema: It was dark, thin, persistent. It had some signs of oil, on the rim of the cup which means to me that it is over extracted, as it gets pushed to the edge of the cup and leaves the lighter less oily (and more bitter) portions of the extraction in the center.
Odor: Yes, again I smelled deep roasted coffee. I was happy, but not fruity tones, nothing that made me want to explore the coffee in my mouth.
Taste: The cup was thin, and not rancid, and while being bitter as I expected, it was quite flat. As if the beans where left out in the open for quite some time.
Overall: I’ve had this brand coffee before (it is actually sponsoring the semi-third wave coffee events that have been put on here in Rome!) but I couldn’t tell this from what I tasted. the coffee was straight, unoffensive, but not distinguishable from other low-end peers. It was a low to mid range Roman coffee. I had a terrific espresso just a few blocks away, so with that, it’s what I perceived this coffee was.
The setup: They had a work-horse setup. A Faema E-91 Ambassador that isn’t particularly pretty- it reminds me of a 1980s Atari or something, but it works. The grinder is also a Faema. The coffee being brewed is Mondi Caffè. They’re an east Roman based roaster that does lots of certified origin roasting and generally does very interesting coffee.
this is what got me interested in this locale: I asked them if they roasted their own coffee and they said ‘yes’ and while they did admit that they hadn’t roasted in a while, apparently some time in the past they were using it. Now it’s just a ‘relic’, or more likely, a tourist attraction, hey it got me in the door, didn’t it?
Columbus Caffè Bar
Gesbar S.R.L.
Viale della Civiltà del Lavoro 96
00144 Roma