WHAT MAKES NEAPOLITAN COFFEE THE BEST OF THE WORLD?

Coffee in Naples dates back to the early
1800's, when walking coffee makers strolled around the city with a pot full of coffee and milk, and with a basket of cups
and sugar to offer a quick breakfast to Neapolitans. Even today coffee is a shared ritual. If you host a guest, it is a moral
obligation to offer him good homemade coffee; If you meet a friend on the street, this is a good excuse to go to a bar. And
there are those who consider it an intimate moment, as Eduardo de Filippo said in the comedy “These ghosts”: "I, for
example, would give up anything except this cup of coffee, sipped quietly, out here on the balcony, after waking up from
a quick nap after lunch. And I have to make it myself, with my own hands". Naples is not the home of coffee, but in the
collective imagination certainly the best coffee is Neapolitan! Some say that it is because of the water, others that the
secret is enclosed in the particular toasting mixture, darker than the others. There are, then, some little things to keep in
mind! The coffee maker should not be washed with soap or detergent, but only rinsed with boiling water. The more you
use the coffee machine, the more the flavor soaks in, and if you wash it with soap everything will be lost. Coffee should
be sipped calmly, in a small ceramic or glass cup, never in plastic and it must meet the rule of the four Cs, that is to be rich
(carico), warm (caldo), comfortable and short (corto). Better bitter, to savor the aroma to its fullest. And finally, before
coffee in Naples, you drink a glass of water: your mouth needs to be cleaned to taste it completely.
Eduardo De Filippo ‘Questi Fantasmi’ coffee scene Pasquale, sitting on the balcony, chats with his neighbour and explains what it takes to make a man happy: just a well-made coffee sipped “after that half hour nap after lunch”. A small vice that holds the poetry of life. The scene in the film, based on the homonymous three- act play written and performed for the theatre by Eduardo De Filippo, is one of the cinematic-theatrical scenarios that best describes the Neapolitan coffee ritual. |