Caffe Vergnano 1882

Luciano Franchi, Caffe Vergnano UK’s Managing Director says: “we held to one basic premise: if the Italians possess a coffee culture at its zenith, then the English possess it at its nadir” … “baristas are trained for three months”…and “we stand head and shoulders above all the coffee bars in London”.

Let’s imagine for a second that this isn’t annoying (which it is), that Italy is the zenith of coffee culture (which it isn’t), and that Britain is the nadir of coffee culture (which it isn’t, quite, even when you exclude Aussies and Kiwis). I’ll take these statements only as permission to measure Vergnano against its own intentions: as a speciality coffee shop, not a run-of-the mill drinkery. Does Caffe Vergnano live up to the goals it sets itself? Well, no.

The tools are a beautiful (or preposterous) 3-group Elektra Belle Epoque machine, and an Elektra timer grinder. They aren’t deployed very effectively.

The beans are shipped in from Italy, packaged like the large water bottle you put in an office water-cooler. I felt bad as I asked the roasting date and received a blank look, but I thought back to the zenith of coffee culture and bit down. It’s an Italian-style dark roast including, I learn from the website, a Nicaraguan bean that is more expensive to cultivate than Blue Mountain. This means it must be good.

The baristas are perfunctory in their execution, and the coffee is commensurately mediocre. I watched shot after shot being pulled with no flushing in between. Tamping was limp, barely smoothing the top of the puck. The resultant 10-15 second espresso was a bit too voluminous, thinnish, with nicely coloured, if not especially thick or long-lived, crema. It was rather bitter but had a slightly caramel taste, which was quite pleasant. The macchiato was completed with a dollop of froth from a pitcher of milk that I hope hadn’t been standing too long on the counter. Microfoam it was not.

The atmosphere is ok, the staff moderately pleasant, and the sandwiches decent. But of course at Vergnano it’s all about the coffee. And I think it fails its own test.