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Rating: Standard, mid to low level Roman coffee
The Eolo Bar Caffè is one of those place that you hope to run into, but only scarsely do. I was lucky to have overlooked this place in Monteverde. It had lots of older and younger people outside, having coffee, and it generally looked like a meeting point for people of the block. It’s what a café should be, among other things, in my opinion. The interior was small, and cool. They had a vintage 1970s tile floor that I loved and the other stuff was all in either black vinyl, polished stainless or mirrors. The barista, seemed to be the partner of the cashier, as both were young and speaking in a way that made you think they take their problems outside of the café, was busy, but very courteous.
This is what I got:
Presentation: Nice clean cup. It is a rather large cup in my opinion, but whatever. No water was given, but it was automatically given to other locals who placed their order via a shout at the door as they finished their cigarettes. The spoon was small and to size, I liked it.
Temperature of Cup: The cup was warm, not scalding, but borderline warm.
Quantity: It was a full, long espresso. No ristretto here.
Temperature: Boy, hot hot. I had to wait a bit for it too cool down as it was simply too warm for me to drink anytime soon after I got the cup.
Volume/Consistency: It was light, thinnish, slightly powdery or fine sand textre, it wasn’t oily either, it felt watery.
Crema: It had the typical profile of over-extraction. Dark warm coffee color and oiliness on one side, moving to light brown and over-extracted on the other. People tend to like this marbleizing effect, buy it doesn’t translate into good creamy espresso…
Odor: It had a woody burnt smell, not necessarily bad, but a bitter dark smell. Having some type of fragrance is already quite a lot!
Taste: It wasn’t bitter at all, it was thin, very flat standard dark-roasted taste, monochromatic, no flavors to explore.
Overall: It was a solid, mid to lower end Roman coffee. Just down the street there’s another café that serves this type of coffee and he was very diplomatic about his choice of brand. Yet, while in the Quattro Venti Café it was a strong cup, here we have a light, repeatable and not necessarily offensive cup.
The setup: I couldn’t really see it, look at the photo below. They had the machine facing inwards and it had lots of things on it making it difficult to figure out what brand it was. Neither could I see the grinder. The coffee was indeed the Rome-based Caffè Fantini.
Here's the cool floor!
Eolo Bar Caffè
Di Aiuto A.
Viale Quattro Venti 102
00152 Roma