Drink the best coffee in Rome at Sant’Eustachio café

As Fiona Lapham told us last month in her article ‘How to drink Italian coffee‘, drinking the world’s most popular beverage is kind of a ritual in Italy : Italians wake up having a cappuccino, digest with an espresso and make friends over a cup coffee. So when on holiday in Rome there is something you just cannot miss : espresso coffee.

Enjoy the best espresso in Rome at Bar Sant’Eustachio

There is one place in Rome you do not want to miss: Sant’Eustachio! Its location is ideal, between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, very close to San Luigi dei Francesi church. You would start your day by visiting the Pantheon, enjoy the square and the nice ice cream shops around the area, then walk towards San Luigi dei Francesi to go see Caravaggio’s frescoes (make sure you don’t go on a Thursday though, the church is always closed on that day and also around lunch time from noon to 3 pm) and then you might want to move onto Piazza Navona. Before you do that, once you get out of San Luigi dei Francesi, look to the right and walk half a block down that way. You’ll see a bar or café (as you prefer to call it) that is always crowded with people lined up to get coffee. Sant’Eustachio is the name and it offers the best coffee in Rome.

The recipe is secret. You can buy an espresso for 1 euro then have to fight to get a spot at the counter, they will ask you “Dolce?” which means “With sugar?”, the answer should be “Sì, grazie!” which means, I am sure you know it, “Yes, thank you.”. What you get in a small espresso cup is the experience of a lifetime: warm, frothy, with the right amount of sugar and foam which is not made of milk but by the coffee itself whipped with the sugar placed at its bottom.

You can try and peep beyond the espresso machines if you want to but to no avail, Sant’Eustachio has a screen between the espresso machines and its costumers. I have a friend who used to work there and would not reveal what goes on behind those screens even if his life depended on it. A secret is a secret! This is what makes coffee at Sant’Eustachio even more of an unforgettable experience: the fight, the secret, the flavor which will make you scoop the foam with the teaspoon till the very last drop.

After your coffee, sample yummy chocolates at Chocolat shop

Once you get out of Sant’Eustachio, satisfied and happy, try and look to your right. You’ll see a small chocolate store called Chocolat. The lady who owns it has a little stand in the window with small chocolate baskets in a jar and some types of food container. Do not hesitate to enter and ask her for the little chocolate basket treat. She will ask you if you have any preferences in the filling: cherries, chocolate and strawberry, pistachios, caramel, milk and honey… they are all nice and warm.

You get to choose the filling and she will nicely scoop it into the chocolate basket, that you can choose it to be made of dark chocolate or white Belgian chocolate. She will place it on a nice paper towel and tell you to swallow it in one byte (do not keep it in your hands, the basket melts under the warmth of its content). Do so and the chocolate will melt on the after taste left by the espresso you just had. That’s when you understand why chocolate is always a good thing to have after coffee. Especially if you get the dark chocolate, the bitter flavor will come in for last! They say in Italy “è la morte sua!” which means “this is the way it should be killed!”.

Coffee, should always be killed by chocolate and this is how you live it up the Italian way. It’s their ritual.

Photo of Caffè Sant’Eustachio, Rome originally posted by mandydale

Topic:  Tips and Ideas | 5 Comments
Tags:  Rome

About the author

Deborha Daniele born in 1973, with a BFA in Illustration/animation from Academy of Art University, San Francisco, California, worked as a concept artist for several years in the United States, particularly as Storyboard Artist and Product Designer for children stationary. She worked for publishing companies for several years as a designer and an illustrator and produced several short animated film with Stop Motion technique and traditional animation. She is currently teaching History of Illustration at the European Institute of Design in Rome and just wrote a book about collecting toy which will be realesed shortly.