Today I will talk about espresso, maybe the most famous Italian coffee, because it’s not only drunk in all bars and restaurants in Italy, but now more and more also abroad.
Espresso is made with a quite complex machine where pressurized water comes in contact with compressed coffee powder, coming out through a kind of nozzle.
There are now many types of those machines, not only for bars but also for home. I always prefer drinking it from a professional machine.
A good espresso coffee is served in cups that are warmed up keeping them on top of the machine. The coffee is freshly grinded and its aroma can vary a lot, depending from its quality, but also from the machine. The real espresso is very creamy and it’s just a very small quantity, absolutely not a full cup, even if the cups are already very small!

Tourists are often quite surprised by this kind of concentrated coffee, they prefer sipping coffee slowly.
That’s why seeing Italians in the bar is very funny and almost hectic, as they don’t drink their coffee, they just “throw” it in!
Being in a crowded bar in any Italian city at 9 a.m. is actually a very eclectic experience. All these people ready to go to work in their very stylish suits, still with their sunglasses on their nose (even if it’s raining), rush into the bar and push each other at the counter. The real amazing thing is that every single Italian likes his coffee in a different way. Who takes it “pure”, who wants it with sugar, some prefer it with cold milk, some with warm milk. You have also a category of people that besides those 4 basic categories also like it in a big cup. In this case the range of “special requests” becomes very wide. In the “big cup” people not only drink a cappuccino, no, they sometimes want a “spotted milk” (means 90% milk against 10% coffee), but also this can be adjusted with many variations. Others want a big cup with coffee and warm milk but “with a lot of foam”. Then you have those who have a particular attention to health, they will order a “deca” but sometimes specifying that it must be HAG (the importance of a brand…). Others like to go back to origins and order a barley coffee. I really admire our barmen!
What about myself? I like a normal espresso and I just add some sugar in it. It’s a matter of fact that I’m not a fantasist regarding coffee….