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Rating: Standard, mid-level Illy Coffee
The R. B. Caffetteria seems to be a small monolocale when you first come in, but then looking towards it’s right hand side, it has a whole covered patio that acts as an extension and seating area. If you look at the outside pictures, you can see this clearly. The interior greets you with a typical ‘Roman’ café, as typical as you can imagine an Irish pub is. And it had two baristas, one an older, cashier-barista who looked like the owner, and another much younger and springy one pulling shots left and right. In the few minutes I was there, there was a wave of people who came and went. The barista was busy as heck making sure all the coffee was served before the clients reached the bar. As people walked in he would yell out to them ‘a coffee for you’? and they’d nod or correct the order with a ‘macchiatto’ or a ‘latte’, which of course is not just a ‘coffee’. When I walked in this younger barista was in the back, and I happened to be the only person in there, so the older barista with a severely deep raspy voice served me. He simply loaded the coffee in the porta filter, and hit the pre-set automatic button for one ‘cup’. The other younger barista then came, found that cup full and gave it to me.
This is what it was:
Presentation: Nice Illy coffee cup. It was a different design than I’d seen. The cups are always quaint, round, and have lots of lettering stuff to catch your attention. For me it’s important that it was clean, not broken, and that the spoon was also clean. In this instance the spoon was still wet from the washing bin.
Temperature of Cup: It was good, not super hot as Illy cups tend to be for some reason. The setup they install usually is super hot.
Quantity: Very short shot, the cup gives for an abundant espresso, this is short short!
Temperature: This was also good. Very warm but not impossibly hot.
Volume/Consistency: It was very creamy, oily-like, but then also sandy, with lots of very fine grounds in the cup. This was especially at the beginning of the drinking experience.
Crema: Well, the crema looked great. In the sense that it had body, looked almost as if wanted to be a tiger striped crema, but then realized that it wasn’t as it’s beans had been too deeply roasted. Either way, it looked elastic, oily and vivid. However, the crema thinned out very quickly, yet maintained its presence throughout the drinking experience substantially adding to it.
Odor: Dark roasted coffee smell. This was also a nice – a very nice- plus!
Taste: This was the surprise I had, it wasn’t a very rich or full espresso. Its taste was very monolithic, monotone, and deeply bitter as expected, but flat. The crema didn’t have a particularly complex taste profile.
Overall: It was a solid mid-level espresso that was very well made. It had all the trappings of a really great coffee, but somehow the ‘materia prima’ was not giving its all.
The setup: It was the standard XP-1 La Cimbali espresso machine with a like branded grinder. The decaff is being spewed out of a Rancilio direct dose grinder. The coffee is of course Illy Caffè.
Caffetteria R. B. SAS
di Bordi Barbara
Via Gerolamo Cardano 87-89
00146 Roma
Tel. 06 5530 0799
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