Last but not least
Italy is in turmoil. Granted, Italy has always been in turmoil or some other kind of uproar since the founding of Rome (753 BC) – every single day; it’s simply part of the country’s character. But ever since Valentina Palange published her book Il Caffè in Italia fa Schifo (Espresso in Italy is disgusting) last spring, the country has been in a state of emergency the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Professor Alberto Grandi’s work La cucina italiana non esiste (Italian cuisine does not exist). Fascists, Bunga Bunga, endless corruption, even repeated failures to qualify for major football tournaments – Italy puts up with a lot, but when it comes to criticism from within its own ranks about food and drink, there are limits.
Palange is one such child of the zeitgeist. She only drinks her concoctions in trendy bars, preferably with a purple froth, the beans plucked solely with her left hand at sunset in a nature reserve, the bearded, barefoot, nipple-pierced barista a consecrated brother of the Order of Hypocritical Rip-off. By extolling such sleazy establishments, she made money on social media and built a modest career, which is now suddenly skyrocketing because she’s capitalising on a national cultural treasure. The lady doesn’t know much about real caffè, which outside Italy is often and for some inexplicable reason called espresso.
Lario Est isn’t exactly the prettiest motorway service station in Italy either. But if you’re heading north on the motorway from Milan, it’s the last one before the Swiss border. The last chance to have a quick coffee – an espresso, that is – standing up, with your shoes on breadcrumbs and torn sugar sachets, your arm propped up on a sticky counter. It’s noisy; not particularly well-smelling lorry drivers are jostling for space, German tourists are gawping and buying cheap salami and overpriced pasta, the barista has been standing behind his bar for fourteen hours and is in a correspondingly bad mood, and somewhere a baby is wailing. Or a dog. It’s probably not the best coffee in Italy, there in Lario Est – very darkly roasted, slightly burnt in flavour, actually a bit bitter. Presumably of inferior quality for the sake of profit. Far from ‘schifo’, i.e. disgusting, but still a long way off.
Because it’s still far better than any espresso outside Italy, because: it’s simply all part of the experience; an Italian coffee is a whole package, a cultural treasure complete with noise and a mostly grumpy barista and rubbish on the floor. But it’s a five-minute break, the portrait of an entire nation with at least three millennia of turbulent history and noble culture, condensed into a small cup. That’s a way of life, and more than that: a zest for life.
More food and drinks: pure.
Be First to Comment