SAN SALVADOR TORREFAZIONE CAFFÈ, PIAZZA ATTILIO PECILE 39-40, 00154 ROMA

Rating: Standard, traditional extra-dark Roman coffee roaster

I had seen this place on Google maps somehow, it came up because I’m always looking at the neighborhoods I’ll visit beforehand. And well, I had seen it was there quite a while ago, and recently when I went to the Nero Vaniglia Caffè I got a chance to pass by San Salvador Torrefazione Caffè.

It was really great. There is no coffee served in the premises, just coffee sold, and other types of sweets and packaged things. Look at the photos below, as it was quite an experience. It turns out the roaster himself was there. I got to ask him some questions, and he showed me around the shop. First he was proud to say that he’d been toasting at the facility for over 40 years. It appears he took over the first owner, if not his father directly. He had a photo of himself with his first batch of coffee roasted.

The he said that he roasts his coffee weekly as they get consumed. He also said he roasts all of the coffee for many bars in town. His wife, I belive, was in the back of the shop doing some book keeping when I came in. Mr. Luigi Pinci is very nice and very willing to showcase what he does. I asked him if he ever rents out time from his roasting machine and he looked at me as if not comprehending the question. He asked me if I wanted to buy the wood roasting 30kg roaster, I said, no thanks, but he went on to try to sell it to me for 320K…. I think he thought I was out to pull a fast one on him or something. Or more probably, tired of people coming in like myself and actually trying to pull a fast one on him... this is Rome after all.

The ‘handing down’ of roasting traditions here in Rome seems like a stupid joke to almost every roaster I’ve encountered. Mr. Pinci didn't want to elaborate on whether he trained others or let younger roasters try out the pursuit of their passion in his premises. Either way, my impression is that here in Rome you don’t collaborate with anybody, you just compete. Everybody is a threat. It’s a kill or be killed stupid attitude that the coffee roasters have here, I guess there’s so many of them, and earnings are so low that … well, they might be somehow justified. Whatever, that’s what I discern from speaking to the roasters, which are all in their 50s or 60s (except for the third wave roasters Marjani Coffee and Rinaldi Torrefazione). But, whatever, I'm getting off track.

So let’s go for what he had on sale there in the open air bins. The bin label shows four different coffee, but in reality there were three different to choose from. He had a large variety of single origin African and South American (only labeled by country of origin) already pre-packaged which in all probability would probably have been a lot fresher than these open air bins, but I wanted to try his ‘fresh’ roast (as he said that these were roasted just ‘last week’ ...).

From left to right:

1. Ambra mix. 90% Robusta, 10% Arabica. 1 Euro for 100g.

2. Suprema mix. 30% Robusta, 70% Arabica. 1.5 Euro for 100g.

4. Fantastica mix. 100% Arabica from Brasil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador and Santo Domingo. 2 Euro for 100g. Holy Cow! This is like a coffee orgy in the dark, you don’t know what damned part or thing your sticking into… well, you get the idea. But I asked him and he was vague about the composition. He said it varied and depended on what beans he had. So we can assume that this is a mix that varies from season to season. But also, I've never had any roaster give me the exact details of his mix, it's all a 'trade secret' that is 'guarded' in the old school recipe way.

Well… I decided to go for the Fantastica mix. Couldn’t resist. And…let’s go see what the packaging looks like:

Nice golden package. He marked that it was only 100g instead of 250.

Now to the beans.

Full City Second cracked beans, to Vienna. Hmm.. no life in them for somebody looking for Third Wave coffee.

When I pulled them out of the bag, they had no smell whatsoever.

After grinding a deep chilling dark roasted charred coffee smell came out of the souls of these beans. Mamma, I was in for a ride here.

Well… I went ahead and pulled an espresso on it.

Lots of nice crema, that’s odd for a full Arabica. But we’ll let that slide.

What came out of this was a deeply astringent, very bitter and simply pungent to near rancid coffee. Extraordinary. I had great water, low brewing at 90C, and well… never had this before. I've brewed these two more times with the same super strong result.

These are some super strong beans. With sugar I'm sure it'll open up in a whole different way, but I take it straight without milk or other additives...

But again, if one want’s to take a tour of a traditional Roman roastery torrefazione, this is the place to hit. The roaster is very nice and really a curia of old school coffee stuff to see, buy and visit.