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Rating: Standard, mid-range Roman coffee
The Tazzina Stregata Caffè (or the bewitched café) is a small, long and busy as hell café. I walked in and there were at east 8 people packed into the small corridor space between the wall and the bar- which was surely less than a meter wide. Then as I tried to order, even more people came. It was fun. Most of the folk here were Romans and the baristas were having fun talking to the regulars. The café is on the piazza Enrico Fermi, so where all the makeshift market stands are every day. It’s a busy and bustling place, and this place moves a breakneck speed to serve it. In the time that I sat drinking my coffee at least three different groups of people came in, had their coffee and left. Ah… Rome, not a chair in sight in this place to chill inside! Funny enough, the chairs on the outside were empty. Coffee in Rome is about getting a quick fix and moving on.
This is what I got:
Presentation: Lovely round buoyant cup, with an older non-descript, but not unadapt spoon. No water given, it was too busy I guess, but I also didn’t bother to ask. Given that this was a solidly locals only, I’m sure they would have oblidged with a glass of water.
Temperature of Cup: It was ok, on the mark.
Quantity: It was a short espresso. This is a big cup and it was kept on the low.
Temperature: Yup a lot warmer than I thought but not scalding. It was borderline… But yet, read on.
Volume/Consistency: It was thin, light, as if it was brewed at a stratospheric temperature. But the coffee itself wasn’t that hot, well hell, it was indeed borderline hot as hell…. but it was simply too little coffee inside the port-filter.
Crema: It looked like a lava field, it was a bit over-extracted, dark areas, and very light areas with bubbles… not a healthy sign, and again, too much water to too little coffee.
Odor: Nothing appetizing, totally dead dark deeply rancid coffee smell. Char-roasted coffee…
Taste: It was very bitter, wickedly bitter up front. But then, it gave way to a flat taste of deeply dark roasted coffee. And then to an empty finish that wasn’t offensive.
Overall: It was a mid- to low-end Roman coffee. Nothing offensive, and with a bit of sugar, I’m sure it would have opened up to something more complex.
The setup: They had a nice very new Faema Theorema espresso machine that could have made this coffee seem like heaven if it was properly dialed in. The grinder, a crappy BNZ that was ugly as heck, and has the styling of a early 1990s haircut. The coffee is a local Roman-roasted Caffè Fantini. This is what locals love to serve, and it’s got that punchy, flat profile that Romans like in their espresso.
La Tazzina Stregata Caffè SRL
Via Guglielmo Marconi 241
00146 Roma
Tel. 06 5530 0676