A few thoughts about coffee

Very few places in San Casciano serve a really good cappuccino. And in any case, what is a cappuccino? The name comes from the order of monks who wore a copious hood, the cappuccio, which was white, on top of a brown habit--milk on coffee.
Two days ago I went to Gualtieri, at Porta Romana. The cakes were excellent: light but substantial, tasty but not heavy. A concerto of tastes: confectioner's cream, brisé pastry, candied fruits, jam, raisins. The cappuccino was heavenly: creamy, with a good separation between the taste of the coffee and that of the milk.
The milk has to be frothed very carefully with copious amounts of small bubbles so that the effect is properly creamy. If it is done too quickly the bubbles are too large. If it is done without proper care, there are too few bubbles and the result is simply hot milk. The secret is in the thump of the milk jug on the table before it is poured: that is what gives it its consistency, because the impact causes the bubbles to settle and become dense.
Thereafter, there are two schools of thought. The purists, who are very few, say that the coffee should be collected from the machine in a small cup; the milk should be decanted into a larger cup with a broad brim and the coffee poured into it. Others rely on the technique of pouring the milk into a large cup of low-lying coffee. With a deft flick of the wrist and a backwards and forwards motion, the brown and white pattern is that of a leaf or a tree. Two swirls, tightly controlled, and you have a heart. Real barmen (and women) take a pride in doing one or the other. The heart is more difficult to produce than the leaf, mainly because of the technical difficulty of making the point at the base of it.
Bad cappuccino mixes the colours, and therefore the tastes. Dark brown coffee and white milk produce a beige or light brown admixture which is neither one nor the other. Perhaps it is also too tepid, or even too hot through being kept under the steam spout for too long. And, of course, the coffee should be freshly ground. There are no short cuts in making a good cappuccino.
People from northern Europe and North America assume that the strength of the taste of coffee is exactly proportional to the amount of caffeine in it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it be made at the bar or in a moka machine at home, espresso coffee is specially designed so that the water passes quickly through the grains of coffee. It picks up the flavour but much less of the caffeine than it would if the grounds were stewed in water, as is done in Anglo-Saxon countries. For this reason, the coffee is very finely ground, so that a large surface area comes into contact with the hot water.
Many northern Europeans and Americans think that the value-for-money to be had in coffee comes from the size of it. Thus in America the espressos are huge and tasteless, or they have the burnt taste of badly roasted coffee beans. Good espresso is made with arabica coffee and the roasting is very carefully controlled. Italians drink espresso in small quantities because the amount of water is insignificant: what counts is the taste of the coffee. In Naples, where coffee is a cult, the espressos are very small indeed, but they have perfect flavour. First you should drink a glass of water to cleanse the taste buds, then the coffee. It is quickly swallowed, but the taste remains for a long time afterwards, stimulating the palate. Neapolitans will admonish you not to put sugar in it, because, Don Arm , vedete veramente: the sugar eats up the flavour of the coffee.
Scaturchio, in Via San Biagio dei Librai and at Montesanto, is the quintessential Neapolitan coffee shop, a temple of proper coffee drinking. But in reality there are various coffee cultures in Italy. In the centre of the country Nannini of Siena schools its bar staff to take great pride in the quality of their espressos, macchiatos (a teaspoonful of frothy milk) and cappuccinos. Sienese cakes--panforte, pan peppato, panforte margherita, ricciarelli, cavallucci, and so on--are world famous and they go very well with coffee. In Turin in the far north the caffé culture is paramount: elegant locales, all polished wood, cut glass and polished brass, the place to take your coffee with Viennese strüdel, and Turinese gianduia, a luscious combination of hazelnut and chocolate. On the other side of the far north, in Trieste, there is a goccio, a word akin to 'goccia'--a drop, but instead it is a specific form of coffee. Nearby in the Veneto, the terrafirma of Venice, the coffee is laced with grappa or other forms of brandy. The Venetians love four things: God, blasphemy, strong drink and the water of the rivers and sea.
So in San Casciano we cannot match the coffee shops of Florence: Robiglio, Gilli, Giubbe Rosse, and so on. But Franchi in Via della Fossa has a schiacciata sandwich, flat bread cooked in olive oil, filled with mozzarella and tomatoes, that is brilliantly tasty.