Culinaire #10.9 (March 2022)

Coffee,

Searching for coffee in Italy

- Head to the busiest cafe — likely what the locals call “un bar” — you can find. “If it’s the busiest, you know it’s the best,” says Peter Izzo, Cappuccino King’s vice president.

“The bustling one, where people are lined up — that’s where you want to be.”

- Remember that a cappuccino is a breakfast coffee, not one served after about 11 am, unless you’re a tourist.

- You don’t have to tip, but take your receipt when you pay. It’s against the law to leave it behind.

- Don’t expect to find a local roaster. Independent microroasters, old and new, are in Italy, but aren’t as common as, say, in Calgary or Edmonton or other major Canadian cities. Most places use beans from major brands such as Illy, Kimbo and Lavazza.

- Arabica beans are the most common, but you’ll find arabicarobusta blends, especially as you travel south. Aficionados say coffee made with arabica beans taste better (smoother, sweeter and more chocolate-y) but robusta beans have more caffeine and make a better crema, the creamyfroth that forms on top of a freshly pulled espresso.

Cappuccino King’s, Peter Izzo

22 Culinaire | March 2022

the Italian Way

BY SHELLEY BOETTCHER

C

appuccino King’s Peter Izzo often gets people coming into his northeast Calgary showroom, searching for secrets. They’ve recently returned from Italy, and they can’t stop talking about the incredible coffee they enjoyed every morning.

“I’ll contradict them. It was probably a lousy cup of coffee and you paid too much for it,” he says with a laugh. “But you were sitting in the middle of a piazza that’s a couple thousand years old. You had your big sunglasses on, and you were feeling like Sophia Loren. Of course it was sensational.”

Still, anyone that has enjoyed an espresso or a cappuccino in Italy, or had good Italian coffee here, would likely argue that as a country no one quite knows and appreciates coffee quite like an Italian. You see, coffee in Italy has deep

roots. In the 1500s, long before Italy was unified into the country we know now, Venetian traders were importing beans from Ethiopia, destined for coffeehouses throughout Europe.

One of the world’s oldest coffee shops, Caffe Greco in Rome, has been open since 1760, the start of the Industrial Revolution. The legendary literary figure Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe drank coffee there, as did Casanova, and the poet Lord Byron.

Just this year, the Italian government announced a bid to have Italian espresso added to UNESCO’s immaterial heritage list. (The decision was to be made public around press time, in spring 2022.)

“Coffee is much more than a simple drink in Italy," Gian Marco Centinaio, the government’s Agriculture Undersecretary told media at the time. "It is an authentic