(ANSA) - A 145-year-old caffè in the centre of Palermo has just won Italy's caffè of the year award, impressing judges with its smooth coffee, fine pastries and efficient service.
The Spinnato Antico Caffè, which has a strong line in rich Sicilian cakes and cookies, emerged from the 1,390 establishments all over the country assessed by the Gambero Rosso food publishing group.
It is an elegant place where Palermo's well-to-do and 'beautiful' people go to sit in a piazza under a broad blue umbrella and watch other people bustle around them. The caffè, situated in Piazza Castelnuovo near two of the city's theatres, is part of a pastry and confectionary business set up about the time the Italian nation was born.
Winning the best caffè award was a rare gastronomic triumph for Italy's south. The best bars and caffès are usually assumed to be in colder northern cities such as Turin and Venice.
In fact, of the 19 establishments included on the shortlist for the prize, only three were south of Rome. The Spinnato was selected by northern coffee-maker Illy from the long list of caffès rated by Gambero Rosso in its 2005 guide to the country's bars and caffès
Thanks to an incomparable mix of climate, architecture,food and national temperament, Italian bars offer places foreating and drinking, socialising and doing business that most widely-travelled observers agree are unique.
Gambero Rosso's survey, which it carries out every year, awards the best establishments the coveted three cups and three heads of wheat, symbolising outstanding coffee and the finest food.
The guide's chief coordinator, Laura Mantovano, admitted that many of the bars and caffès singled out for mention were not exactly cheap. But she said that was not the point. "People don't mind spending a bit more if what they're getting is topnotch," she said.
Italy currently has 130,000 places calling themselves bars and Gambero Rosso notes that some of them - such as those offering live entertainment and quick-dating evenings - are very different from what Italian grandparents might expect.
But whatever modern bars look like, coffee is always at the heart of it. According to Andrea Illy, CEO of top Italian coffee firm Illy, Gambero Rosso is right in devoting so much time to assessing the coffee served in bars.
"The coffee a bar serves is like its calling card. It reflects the quality of everything on offer there," he said.
