Why I've broken up with Italian coffee

In Spain, café con leche rules the roost — but you need to be vigilant about the beans

It's over.

I think what converted me from being a habitual espresso (simple 'caffè' in Italian, ask for a coffee there, and that's what you'll get) drinker to someone who prefers milky coffee is probably meia de leite in Portugal: a bloody strong coffee with frothed milk. And genuinely, the coffee quality is really good in Portugal — certainly compared to the average here in Spain, where low-grade torrefacto and robusta are the norm, though a lot of bars in my neighbourhood in Barcelona do arabica, thankfully.

I could never understood how the likes Starbucks and Costa ever entered the market in Portugal around a decade or so ago. Not only is Portuguese coffee great, but it's very cheap too. I guess tourism has exploded there since, plus there’s the digital nomad, golden visa and international tech worker crowd, so if there wasn't a big market for generic global rubbish like that before, there probably is now.

Moving back to Ireland in 2016, flat white had become a thing, and that plugged the large meia de leite-shaped hole. Very similar overall. Just a lot pricier, as coffee culture is a new-fangled import in our traditionally tea-sipping society.

I still to this day don't know whether it's Australia or New Zealand we have to thank for that particular innovation, but a big thank you to our brothers and sisters down there where the toilet water flushes in reverse.

But back to Spain. As I said, the standard is for torrefacto preservation and robusta beans. Apparently, this is in part a legacy of the post-Civil War period where coffee was in short supply, and you needed a long-lasting preservation method, and it just sort of stuck. James Blick covered this well a few years back.

But if you can find a place with better quality coffee (and my local bar de confianza in Barcelona has Illy, prized by Italians, ditto my old haunt in Malasaña in Madrid where I went for breakfast over the weekend), then a good old café con leche becomes a really great fix. No need to go to any of these proliferating, expensive, hipster roaster spots.

In addition, these fancy places never seem to have a terrace. As a filthy smoker, there's no better combination than having a cigarette with coffee. Anyway, also as a smoker, and when not brewing copious amounts of short coffee in a moka pot at home, you really want something longer than an espresso.

All in all, this is what led me to do what I did when I went back to Italy for the first time in thirteen years last month, my first time in il bel paese since espresso ceased to be my go-to — breaking all the rules by ordering cappuccino after the 11.30am, breakfast time, cut-off. With an apology and great trepidation at first, but increasing relief after the initial time. I didn't get arrested. They didn't deport me to Albania. They didn't even tut, scowl or throw me a dirty look.

Maybe all those viral social media posts over the last few years were wrong.

Or maybe, if I'd gone down the coast to Nicotera, where the American biologist Ancel Keys 'discovered' the Mediterranean diet in the 1950s, or deepest, darkest Abruzzo, I'd have been met with a less favourable reaction.

But in the centre of a large city like Naples, it was fine.

Basically an espresso, café solo or a ristretto is now only something I'd want after a heavy meal to cut through the food.

Otherwise, I need something that's going to last me at least as long as my cigarette, rather than downed in an instant.

I'm also making good use of the Aeropress my brother bought me a few years ago at home, so my beloved set of Bialetti moka pots don't get much of a workout these days.

So there you have it. It was a good innings. I had a lot of Italian friends back home in Ireland, indeed I even once lived in all-Italian house in Cork. And when I first moved to Barcelona in 2009, perhaps half of my social circle was Italian (Italians always seem to be the biggest contingent on any Erasmus program, and also they're also the biggest immigrant community in Barcelona these days, some 40,000 all told).

But I've broken up with Italian coffee.

Vi prego di perdonarmi!

Give me good beans and a café con leche these day, on a terrace, and I'll be a very happy man.