L'Italo-Americano
THURSDAY, JULY 11, 2019
www.italoamericano.org
4
FRANCESCA BEZZONE
NEWS & FEATURES
TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS
T
he relationship
between caffé and the
city
of Naples can
only be called love. La
tazzulella di caffé is
the way Neapolitans welcome
the day, recharge throughout it
and
show friends they enjoy their
company. It is the occasion to
socialize, share opinions and dis-
cuss about the latest news and
gossip.
Not much different from what
happens
in the rest of Italy, you
may say. And, under many points
of view, you're right. In Italy, cof-
fee is not only a way to perk up
during a particularly sluggish
morning,
it's part of the culture,
from North to South. But in
Naples… in Naples coffee is
sacred: from the choice of the
right blend, to the machines used
to
make it, all the way to how it
is served, a cup of coffee is never
"simple" here: it's a labor of love,
craftsmanship and traditions that
verges on the religious.
And this is fantastic.
Legends say that it was a
Roman musicologist, Pietro della
Valle, to introduce coffee to the
streets of Naples. Della Valle,
apparently brought back kahve to
Naples from Jerusalem, where he
had lived for a numbers of years.
Others maintain that the precious
brew was brought to the city
around the mid-15th century via
Salerno, home to the first univer-
sity of medicine in the Western
world.
In spite of these possible early
encounters with it, Naples fell in
love with coffee relatively late,
especially when compared with
other European cities like Wien
and Venice. At the beginning of
the 19th century, caffettieri ambu-
lanti, street coffee vendors, were a
fixture in Naples: people would
gather around them, get their cof-
fee and socialize in simplicity.
It is, however, in the 20th cen-
tury that Naples truly turned into
the "city of coffee," also thanks to
the birth of many cafés — i bar,
as we call them in Italy — that
became themselves symbols of
the loving relationship between
the city and kahve, cafés that are,
today, real icons of Neapolitan
life.
L'Italo Americano had the
luck to chat with the owners of
two such institutions: Errico
Castagnola, second generation
owner and manager of Bar Mexi-
co, and Massimiliano Ciorfito
who, along with his brother Raf-
faele, has been successfully run-
ning Caffé Ciorfito since 1990.
With them, we didn't only discuss
Viva 'a tazzulella: Naples and her love story
with coffee and tradition
Continued to page 6
A tazzulella 'e caffè: Naples' first love
A collection of mokas: the most traditional way to make coffee at home, also in Naples
