Can't speak for Portugal, but "decent espresso at every corner" in Italy is sort of a myth.
There is uniform espresso at every corner, with quite dark roasts that cover up potential differences in flavor for the beans/crops. That's a side effect of expecting coffee for ~1 Euro, regardless of quality: quality generally goes down.
We Italians are used to that (you could say we don't know better), and dislike any variation from the norm, so that doesn't bother most people; in actual coffee countries you have places that do care about coffee quality and experiment with single-origin, different roasts, etc. In Italy these places are a tiny minority, and for the rest is the same burnt expresso everywhere (and, if you're unlucky, very acid).
It might be different in big cities like Milan, but I doubt it.
Right, but "uniform espresso" is exactly what I mean when I say Italy has "decent espresso at every corner". In the Netherlands, where I live, it's "every place has a different variation of awful slop", except for a handful of good coffee places (that then may suffer from hipster problem of serving sour^H^H^H^H fruity coffee".
So yes, when people praise Italian coffee it's because you're pretty much guaranteed it will be ok.
Heh, I don’t know, uniform could be good if I could pay 2 Euros and get something that is not very bitter, or very sour, or the machine has not been cleaned, or… but uniform in style, doesn’t mean consistent in quality.
I’m also in NL and tbh while it goes sometimes horribly bad (also when visiting people, they offer you a coffee but you end up with a kut senseo…) it’s on average actually quite ok… but I only drink a regular “koffie” here unless it’s a fancy coffee place, so maybe that’s the secret :)
>that then may suffer from hipster problem of serving sour^H^H^H^H fruity coffee"
I learned to appreciate the fruity coffee of light roasts, but it is an acquired taste. If you want bitter roasts that tastes like burnt ash, get any Starbucks.
I’m sure one could learn to appreciate all the different aromas, yes, and hat doing so would be an amusing and interesting pursuit. However, I have enough hobbies and interests already and don’t need another one. I just want coffee that sort of resembles what you can get at every street corner in Italy.
Agreed on Starbucks being roasted too hard, though. I suspect that’s because most of their coffee will be diluted by large amounts of milk and sugary stuff and this way some of the bitter flavor people associate with coffee.
Pretty similar in Milan from what I could tell (traveled there frequently before the pandemic). Although there were a handful of coffee shops that seemed to be accepting a specialty coffee angle where for 5 euros you could get a distinctly non-Italian offering.
This is something I've always wondered about. I _loved_ the coffee in Rome almost universally. Even in Madrid I enjoyed the coffee, although it was totally different than the stuff in Rome. I knew it wasn't the best beans. Sometimes it wouldn't even be freshly ground.
However, in the US, even at the fanciest hipster coffee places, the espresso is incredibly bitter and astringent/acidic. Is that on purpose? Do Americans actually want their coffee to be super bitter and astringent/acidic? The other thing I've noticed is that in Rome and Madrid, most coffee drinkers are just drinking the coffee. But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk. So I just assumed that the reason for the bitterness and astringency was because the people making it never actually drank it as espresso.
So - American espresso drinkers - tell me - do you actually prefer that super bitter taste of the thin espressos that you get at supposedly good coffee places like, e.g., Blue Bottle over the rich and frothy espressos of Rome?
As a foreigner living in America, I hate the super bitter taste of the thin espressos in the places that are supposedly good. I've given up on buying coffee in most places, particularly since I tend to drink it black.
Honestly even Nespresso is better than that shit. And Lavazza Blue pods are an order of magnitude better than Nespresso, so that's what I drink daily when I need a quick fix
> the espresso is incredibly bitter and astringent/acidic. Is that on purpose? Do Americans actually want their coffee to be super bitter and astringent/acidic?
Haha, yeah. The new "hipster" coffee I'd tend to say leans more on the side of expressing the acidity of the bean through light-roasts over the chocolate-y flavors from dark roasts.
> But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk.
I think this is true with espresso, but not with pourovers. I think the people who like to drink espresso by itself won't go to a cafe to get an espresso since they'll likely get a better shot with their own machine than a cafe's machine.
The reason being is that cafes don't have time to re-dial in their shots midday, and they don't need to be as detailed with their shot-pulling since most customers order milk-based espresso drinks (so most bitterness/sourness from over/under extraction gets masked with milk).
Thin, grassy, acidic espresso is a sign of 'third wave' coffee... the idea that you could roast the beans juuust enough to convert the sugars and keep a bunch of neat flavors in a mild and bright cup. But they walk the line of juuust enough roasting very close, which often results in under roasting especially in copy cat producers. Underroasted coffee is marginally ok in pour over / chemex, but is horrible in espresso.
There is a 'fourth wave' coffee pushing back on this trend that anchors more to big dark espressos sometimes even using robusta beans for extra creama and caffeine.
I grew up in an Italian American neighborhood. I grew up drinking coffee from a moka pot, Italian style espresso and the odd cappuccino here and there.
I'd say you can't generalize who uses milk or not, either. Also the super thin third wave espressos are more acidic than bitter. Read up on third wave or Nordic espresso. I don't think you have a full grasp on that aspect of coffee outside of Southern Europe...
There is uniform espresso at every corner, with quite dark roasts that cover up potential differences in flavor for the beans/crops. That's a side effect of expecting coffee for ~1 Euro, regardless of quality: quality generally goes down. We Italians are used to that (you could say we don't know better), and dislike any variation from the norm, so that doesn't bother most people; in actual coffee countries you have places that do care about coffee quality and experiment with single-origin, different roasts, etc. In Italy these places are a tiny minority, and for the rest is the same burnt expresso everywhere (and, if you're unlucky, very acid).
It might be different in big cities like Milan, but I doubt it.