AL CAVALLINO BIANCO CAFFÈ, VIA EMANUELE FILIBERTO 27, 00185 ROMA

Rating: Standard, Excellent Traditional Roman Coffee

Literally, after a couple of hundred different cafes here in Rome, I am still glad to pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t going to walk into the Al Cavallino Bianco Caffè. It looked like a restaurant, and by rule, I can’t imagine going into every dammed restaurant to see if they have good coffee or not. (Which I acknowledged does leave out potentially stellar coffee being served in some upper end restaurants). But whatever, I decided to walk into this place because it tried darn hard to call attention to itself as being ‘also’ a café. Well, I’m so glad I did. I walked in and it was dead quiet, not a soul inside. On the left of the entrance was a restaurant, and along the right wall the ‘café’ bar proper. I sat there waiting and then realized that the owner/cashier was sitting at the cash register crunching lots of numbers. I walked up to her and asked if I could interrupt. She apologized profusely, and came up to serve me an espresso.

This is what I got:

Presentation: Yup, a nice cup. Short, stout, fluted out, and a no frills hard edges design. Nothing round or lumpy. Water was served immediately and without asking. The spoon was clean, the cup crisp. The coffee by Ciamei, which is a roaster that is literally one block away. I had gone there to buy some coffee and do a review, but they were closed (the retail was, they were busy packing freshly roasted coffee for vendors!).

Temperature of Cup: It was cool, not cold, but warm, mild, not hot. Good.

Quantity: It was a very short shot. Less than an ounce (30ml). I was happy.

Temperature: Boy, it was cool as well. It wasn’t hot. It was warm, perfect, hell, it felt almost lukewarm- and I was happy.

Volume/Consistency: So creamy, so smooth, so thick yet not heavy. No powdery taste, but rather a silky thickness that blew me away. It was pure Grade A maple syrup!

Crema: It was dark, not over extracted, uniform, persistent, and boy did it add to the drinking experience.

Take a look, it just coated everything on its way down.

Odor: Yes, dark roasted warm coffee smell. I was literally in heaven by this moment!

Taste: It was oily, creamy and bitter. The bitterness was not rancid, sharp, nor over the top. It was a rounded profiled bitterness that left an after taste of caramel, and butterscotch. It was something really great.

Overall: It was one of the best traditional Roman espressos I’ve had in months. It was completely controlled, it was multi-faceted in terms of taste, smell, texture and consistency. It was really an espresso that got better and better as I drank, it.

I had to literally have every drop of it, it was so good!

The setup: They had a beautiful Fiorenzato Piazza San Marco three group lever espresso machine that did a splendid job. It was either a new machine or just serviced as there was none of the rancidness that plagues lever machines which have a dirty boiler. The grinder was an Eureka, and the coffee was Caffè Ciamei. A local down-town San Giovanni area roaster (it’s a block away from this café). Definitely a café worth seeking out and having a coffee in!