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Rating: Standard, mid to low-end coffee
Heading up the Oderisi da Gubbio avenue you walk into the realm of the Babylon Café. It comprises like four locales, has lots of window space and has a definite presence. On the outside the are lights, bells, whistles, you name it. You ‘know’ you’ve arrived to this place. It's apparantly a franchise, and displays this very proudly on its merchandizing. The inside is marked by two areas. On the right you have a gambling area (still can’t get over this here in Rome!) and on the left you have a long sweets/pastries area with tables bar, etc. It’s all a bit over the top with tons of pinks greys and lots of white. Overall, given that there’s two very large automatic sliding doors, it’s cold inside, not comfortable, as people are passing by every second on the street and the doors practically always open. The staff is very busy, and very nice. The two lady-baristas were amused that I was taking pictures. And yet let me go about my business. Apparently, the place is open 24 hours a day which is really an exception here in Rome. Good to know!
Asking for a coffee got me this response:
Presentation: Clean, crisp gleaming cup, very nice. Spoon was just the right size. The cup is rather large, so we know we’re going to have a long espresso eitfher way we see it. Water, an abundant glass, was given immediately. Great service.
Temperature of Cup: The cup was on the hot side, but not scalding. It was cold inside so my hands a bit cold too, and thus couldn’t judge very well. But I didn’t get burnt, that’s for sure.
Quantity: It was a long espresso. It wasn’t a double, but a bit more than should have been there. It came over extracted.
Temperature: Temperature was warmer than I thought. It OK, on the high side of the spectrum.
Volume/Consistency: It was thin, it wasn’t watery, but instead slippery. Not necessarily silky but rather I could taste the coffee grains quite strongly in the coffee.
Crema: Well, look for yourself. The Crema looked more like fresh bubbling lava than anything else. It broke into crema-bergs and then turned into the Andromeda galaxy, see below.
As you can see however, it was oily. This helped the expresso drinking experience.
Odor: There was plenty of odor here. It was a very deeply roasted coffee smell that arose into my nose. While I was glad that the coffee had aroma, it was really detracting from the experience, rather than adding to it.
Taste: It was very bitter, like the smell. It was almost rancid, but didn’t arrive there. The burnt smell translated into the coffee itself, it tasted a bit burnt, and then came the acidic taste rushing in.
Overall: Overall, given the good service, the water, the cup being clean, and the fact that you can obviously see the espresso was over-extracted (bubbly crema) it remained away from the pure-rancid espresso. So while it wasn’t the most pleasing, it wasn’t the worse. It was low to mid-range espresso.
The setup: They had a nice, Spartan setup with a La Cimbali Espresso and grinder machine. The coffee being roasted is Portioli Caffè, which is a Milan based roaster.
Babylon Café
C.S.M. 2 S.R.L
Via Oderisi Da Gubbio 185-191
00146 Roma
Tel. 06 553 02122