Firenze’s Morning Coffee Ritual

I stayed with my friends Susan and Alberto in Firenze years ago. In the early morning, Alberto and I went in to town to do some work. He took me to his coffee shop, the cafe his father and even grandfather had favored, and ordered two cappuccinos. They came, along with two clear glasses of water. Everyone talked, the caffès were perfect. Later that morning, I stopped in for a second cappuccino. It too was perfect but I did not get a glass of water. 

That evening, as we told our tales and began preparing for dinner, I mentioned that I went back for a second cappuccino but did not get a glass of water. No one said a word, it was a silence, and then Susan, with her gentle laugh, said, they did not think that you would notice. Alberto will tell them. And fix it.

In Italy, when you say cappuccino, that is what you will get. With not a single other word, or question.  In Milano, in the brilliant department store Rinascente, there is a coffee shop on the 10th floor, overlooking the nearby Duomo. In the restrooms, the windows are near floor to ceiling, so you can appreciate the brilliant and complicated details of the roof of the Duomo, lovingly described as a full wedding dress in the rain.

During the week, the long counter of the coffee shop is quite full in the mornings, with the wealthy women of Milano at the counter, before they begin their shopping. There is an appropriately handsome young man who manages the counter, welcoming each person with a good morning. They are all having a cappuccino. If they wish that it might be fortified, with a small shot of grappa or brandy added, they will lift their pinky finger ever slightly and he will discreetly add a tiny bit of alcohol to the cup. Formally, it is called a caffe corretto, coffee corrected. Shopping, it is the start to the day.

Such details were the framework and intoxicant when coffeeshops in America were first being imagined. The brilliance of a tightly constructed tradition, much of it unspoken.