A serving of espresso at the Lavazza Museum in Turin; and (pic, below) breakfast customers at Caffe Baratti & Milano, inside the Galleria Subalpina in Turin. The high price of beans has put coffee bars in a bind in Italy, where the drink is a ritual and customers demand cheap espresso. — Fabio Bucciarelli/The New York Times Company
ANDREA Consilvio did something this spring that he called “a little crazy” – he bought an old and well-known coffee bar in the northwestern Italian city of Turin, his hometown.
Brewing coffee for coffee-obsessed Italians, the people who invented espresso and the commercial machines and stovetop pots to make it, might hardly seem like a leap of faith.
