An expert assesses the Drive Cafés

One of the world's leading master coffee roasters from Italy, Frank Bertolucci (from Verona) visited Vancouver last week, and through a series of chance relationships, was introduced to The Republic. Pointing out the plethora of Italian cafés on Commercial Drive, The Republic was able to entice Mr Bertolucci into spending an afternoon hopping from café to café with us in the hopes we could get his expert assessment of every aspect of them. The afternoon was very successful, and this is what, in abbreviated form, he had to say.

 
Café Napoli: Upon first entering, Bertolucci quietly noted the absence of serious-looking coffee drinkers in the Napoli. He also quickly noticed a back room into and out of which there was a constant stream of coming and going, everyone being especially careful to close the door firmly. Why? I couldn’t answer. The coffee was acceptable and he found the sandwich menu, though thorough, a bit lacking in imagination. He liked the deep alcove carved out of the front of the place, allowing smokers more than the customary foot-wide strip they normally have to crowd under.
 
Caffé Amici: Bertolucci was unable to get a bead on the character of the Amici. It was strange, he said: the patio out front, though fenced in too high, was ample, the space inside not particularly offensive, the service no more gruff as anywhere else. And yet there was, Bertolucci sighed, a sadness about the place. When we came in, he asked, did I notice how all the men looked up from their silent tables to see who we were, with too much a bearing of desperation on their long faces? The coffee—“it lacks the love”—was serviceable; the pizza in the warmer looked aged.
 
Turk’s Coffee: For an ostensibly non-Italian café situated in the midst of what used to be widely-known as Little Italy, mostly because of all the Italian cafés on this street, Turk’s received a glowing review from Bertolucci. Too warm inside in the manner of all the more respected cafés of his native Italy, Bertolucci pointed out the dark walls and the very secure seating offering patrons many chairs with their backs to the walls. The gracious and kind manner of the service impressed him, and though he wouldn’t try one, he did remark on the size of the cinnamon buns. The coffee, he said, did not “express distinction,” as he put it, but he pointed out that what was more important was that a café offer what mirrors its clientele. And to his mind, Turk’s did no less than that.
 
Café Calabria: At first, Bertolucci refused to enter the Calabria. The ostentation, he said, was “crushing to his soul.” We sat outside and looked over our shoulders inside, all the while Bertolucci behaving with the nervous twitching of a cow outside a slaughterhouse. He noted the statuary and described what was being attempted with it, and pointed out the ring of photographic portraits around the place, as if to prove his theory of what was going on here. It seems, he said, like the kind of place where, if you pulled two tables together to share coffee with friends, the owner would just as likely throw you out. The coffee, he said, reflected the same misapplied ostentation, though the sandwiches (bordering on too expensive) were made with quality, fresh ingredients.
 
Continental Coffee: Bertolucci was immediately impressed with the grandiose space of the Continental and the more-than-generous style of seating. Service, he noted, holding his hand beside his mouth to temper the remark, was a bit cold, but that was more than made up for in the warmth of the clientele inside—a product, he stated, of the space and the chairs. As we scanned about the large room, he wanted me to notice how most people seemed to know each other—a very good quality when not overdone, and hard to achieve for a café. The coffee was distinctive, Bertolucci pointed out, but it was simply not the kind he preferred. The food on offer mystified him, but he didn’t sample any to make a definitive conclusion about it.
 
J J Bean: Bertolucci was quite dismissive about the name of this café, making some remark I couldn’t quite hear about shopping malls and puns. He said he found the atmosphere inside circus-like, with the high stools and tiny tall tables, the rotunda in the middle, and the lack of any spot one might go “to be alone with a lover or a newspaper.” “Same thing!” I chirped, a remark he might not have understood properly. Again, though, like Turk’s, he impressed upon me how the place was definitely all about the personality of the clientele, instead oftrying to express some point not its own. “A café has to be itself, it has to be whatever those who come to be inside it make of it. Inflexibility is the reliable mark of a poor café.” The coffee was top quality he assured me, and the food was acceptable, though little had been done with it to entice, “or seduce,” Bertolucci winked.
 
Joe’s Café: It was as though Bertolucci was able to divine history by simply standing in the middle of wherever it had happened. Though unaware of the story here at Portuguese Joe’s, Bertolucci understood this café immediately to be a museum housing an exhibit called “Fate.” He knew nothing of the lesbians kissing who were told to stop by Joe, or of the ensuing protest marches by lesbians drawn by the breathtaking injustice from across the city every day thereafter, or of the garden hose Joe installed up in his awning to surprise the mob of protestors with a cold shower the next time they showed up outside with their anti-Joe’s Café placards and anti-Joe chants. But Bertolucci also said nothing about the large portrait of Franco hanging prominently over the bar. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the coffee here, and the sandwiches were also strictly what was necessary.
 
Café Roma: The broad windows appealed to Bertolucci here: “as much to be seen as to see.” Though lacking, he said, in a “you are here” sense about the inside of the place, he particularly appreciated the many spots of “public privacy” (as he called it) found in the many corners with tables. The coffee cups with painted scenes of Italy went down very well with Bertolucci—by chance, he was served his in a cup picturing Verona! “A good place,” he declared, while gesturing with his hand, though I noticed a degree of ambivalence. The coffee was a bit oily, he found (“Rome,” he moaned), but the soup and focaccia he declared a complete success.
Abruzzo Café: The first thing Bertolucci noticed here was the holy shrine to the soccer ball held aloft near the ceiling in a glass cube, “a tabernacle” he said; along all the walls, the glass-framed soccer shirts; and the big-screen TV and chalkboard noting the upcoming satellite-fed soccer games. “I’ve come home,” Bertolucci intoned. “It’s a cathedral among huts,” he whispered. He pointed out the stacks of extra chairs discreetly pushed in the corners, the pizza-making room in the hall, and the back-door entrance “where everyone can feel like they belong here.” Bertolucci declared the Abruzzo to express with the most subtlety and charm the true instincts of the perfect Italian café: “It lives, it breathes, can you feel its heart beat?” He stood across the street to get distance on it and lifted both his arms and declared in his booming voice, “It is what it is!” The coffee was nearly oil-free; the pizza and sausages, “about enough, it is not a restaurant, you know.”
 
 
And Commercial Drive, the street itself? “Not bad,” Bertolucci nodded. “But it isn’t Italy. It’s nothing I can explain.” And on that note, I thanked him for his generous time and sent him home.