Check back soon
Once posts are published, you’ll see them here.
ACCADEMIA CAFFÈ, VIA DEL TRITONE 54, 00187 ROMA
Rating: Standard, low-end Roman coffee
The Accademia Caffè is in the heart of Rome and a few steps away from the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain. It’s on the busy Via Tritone, and yet still manages to establish a calm sophisticated air. From the outside you’d say it’s any old shabby café, but inside it’s a very upscale like atmosphere, with lots of light wood trimmings, modern tables and a style that’s more business casual than anything you’d associate with ‘Accademia’. The contrast is also seen in on the prices. If you have a café at the bar, the price is .90 cents, at a table, 4 euros. Yup, definitely not student prices, or literati / cognoscenti prices. These are tourist prices or business prices. Either way, after being spoken to directly in English without having opened my mouth, the cashier fixed the coffee price for something a bit tamer.
Here’s what I got:
Presentation: I like this shape of coffee cup. It is small, fluted outwards and permits a very small espresso. No water offered, the barista was too busy cleaning anything and everything that came into his view in order to crank out the next order. And of course, doing that while joking with other staff about who knows what. The spoon was just a bit too big for the bottom of the
Temperature of Cup: It was super extra hot. No surprise, as this place was full of tourists and usually the cups tend to be just that much hotter when coffee is being made for the tourist market. Who knows why,
but I can vouch for that!
Quantity: It was definitely a short shot, near the lines of a ristretto in any other country. Here it was a good sized espresso.
Temperature: After I waited a good 2 minutes it was still hot. Since it was definitely still warm, it was extra hot at extraction time. It did burn my upper mouth when I drank it, so not a good experience.
Volume/Consistency: It was powdery, chalky and gave me the sensation that there was a lot of coffee powder in my mouth. It wasn’t very oily, but sludgy.
Crema: It was on the lighter end, it had a point of overextraction, but only about 1 second (see bottom side of the crema), and yet looked elastic, like wet paint and was good. It didn’t seem to add to the experience of drinking the coffee.
Odor: Dark roasted coffee smell, I’ll take what I get!
Taste: It was a muted bitter opening, leading to a flat powdery dark-roasted coffee taste that then opened and finished with a deep bitter coffee notes. It was rather flat in taste and evolution, and the temperature didn’t help.
Overall: It was a rather low-end Roman coffee. It is normal for this type of coffee to appear in this context. The café is turns out is more a bistro type of environment, and the café a remnant of its prior existence when there was more of a working class in this neighborhood. Now it exists through tourism, and the coffee is something to wash down the uber sweet desserts that are looking up at you from below glass counter.
The setup: They had a very beautiful Wega espresso machine, a Mazzer grinder, and a nice small Eureka grinder for decaf. The coffee was Marziali Caffè, a Roman based roaster noted for extremely dark roasts and hair splitting bitterness, but at times- when done right- is quite magical. Funny thing, is that on the receipt, it seems the locale is owned by ‘Giamaica Caffè’, which is another coffee company here in Rome. I wonder what the deal is? But it’s not the first time I walk into a ‘flagship’ coffee store and find out they’re serving the competitions coffee… the coffee world here in Rome is an odd odd business!
Accademia Caffè
Giamaica Caffè S.R.L.
Via del Tritone 54
00187 Roma
tel. 06 679 3585