The Food of Love

One In a little side street off the Viale Glorioso, in Rome's Trastevere, there is a bar known to those who frequent it simply as Gennaro's. It is, to look at, not much of a bar, being the approximate size and shape of a small one-car garage, but the passing tourist would note that there is room outside for two little tables and an assortment of nonidentical plastic chairs that catch the sun in the morning, while the passing coffee lover would note that there is room inside on the stained zinc counter for a vast, gleaming Gaggia 6000, the Harley-Davidson of espresso machines. There is also room, just, behind the stained zinc counter for Gennaro, widely regarded by his friends as the best barista in all Rome and a very sound fellow to boot.Which was why, one fine spring morning, twenty-eight-year-old Tommaso Massi and his friends Vincent and Sisto were standing at the bar, drinking ristretti, arguing about love, waiting for the cornetti to arrive from the bakery, and generally passing the time with Gennaro before jumping on their Vespas to go off to the various restaurants around the city that employed them. A ristretto is made with the same amount of ground coffee as an ordinary espresso but half the amount of water, and since Gennaro's espressos were themselves not ordinary at all but pure liquid adrenaline, and since the three young men were in any case all of an excitable temperament, the conversation was an animated one. More than once Gennaro had to remind them not to all argue at once'or, as the Roman vernacular has it, to parlare ?nu strunzo ?a vota, to only speak one piece of shit at a time. The unusual strength of Gennaro's ristretti was the result of his honing the Gaggia's twin grinding burrs to razor sharpness, packing the basket with the resulting powder until it was as hard as cement, then building up a head of pressure in the huge machine and waiting until the dial showed eighty pounds per square inch before finally allowing the water to blast into the packed coffee. What came from the spout after that was barely a liquid at all, a red-brown ooze with a hanging quality like honey dripping off the end of a butter knife, with a chestnut-colored crema and a sweet, oily tang that required no sugar, only a gulp of acqua minerale and a bite of a sugar- dusted cornetto, if only the bakery had delivered them. Gennaro loved that machine like a soldier loved his gun, and he spent even more time stripping it down and cleaning it than he did making coffee. His goal was to get it up to a hundred PSI, way off the gauge, and make a ristretto so thick you could spread it like jam. Tommaso was privately convinced that even to attempt this feat was to run the risk of the Gaggia's exploding and taking them all with it, but he respected his friend's commitment and ambition and said nothing. It was, after all, self-evident that you couldn't be a great barista without taking risks. The conversation that morning was about love, but it was also about football. Vincent, who had recently become engaged, was being scolded by Sisto, to whom the idea of restricting yourself to just one woman seemed crazy. ?You might think today that you have found the best woman in the world, but tomorrow?Sisto flicked his fingers under his chin?who knows? ?Look,? Vincent explained patiently, or as patiently as he was capable of, ?how long have you been a Lazio supporter? ?All my life, idiot.' ?But Roma are...' Vincent hesitated. He wanted to say ?a better team,? but there was no point in turning a friendly discussion about women into a deadly fight. '...doing better,? he said diplomatically. ?This season. So far. What of it? ?Yet you don't start supporting Roma.' ?E un altro paio di maniche, cazzo.* That's another thing altogether, you dick. You can't switch teams.' ?Exactly. And why not? Because you have made your choice, and you are loyal to it.' SistoAnthony Capella is the author of 'The Food of Love' with ISBN 9780670033225 and ISBN 0670033227.