Caffé del Doge opens in Palo Alto
Posted by TheShot on 18 Jan 2006 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Local Brew
I’ve always said that Eton Tsuno of Café Organica is an espresso visionary. Now his, along with Santa Clara’s Barefoot Coffee Roasters, aren’t the only Bay Area cafés to be famous for offering a choice of coffee bean blends for your espresso.
As reported in today’s San Francisco Chronicle (Cetrella owner to bring chowder house to Half Moon Bay), there’s a new arrival in town: Caffé del Doge. Located at 419 University Ave. (near Waverly) in Palo Alto, this Venice, Italy-based coffee roaster and café supposedly offers ten or more different bean stock choices for your made-to-order espresso (a very New World take, that’s for sure). Taking the “Have It Your Way” mantra a step even further, this 50-seat café apparently handles a variety of orders of how you would like it prepared — including a series of coffee “cocktails”.
I’m more than familiar with Caffé del Doge. A little over a year ago, when I was last in Venice, I encountered their beans in a variety of restaurants and bars. However, the one thing I could not find all around town was a single branded Caffé del Doge café. Ironic that you can find one in Palo Alto and not Venice, isn’t it?
In fact, by most Italian standards, I found the espresso in Venice to be generally inferior — particularly when compared to most of what you can find in Roma or Napoli. Venetian baristas are often younger, transitional employees rather than the careerist professionals you might find elsewhere in Italy’s best cafés. And while Venice was once a very important coffee trading port with the East, a far better bet than their coffee is their grappa and amarone. (And I’m not even including the overpriced dreck they serve the tourists in the Piazza San Marco.)
As for Caffé del Doge, their coffee beans are pretty good. But I was not overly impressed. Perhaps the best coffee I found from my last travels there, and also popular with the few locals, came from a local roaster called Torrefazione India Caffé. You can find one of their bean & leaf stores (a true torrefazione that doesn’t serve retail beverages) in the Dorsoduro district on Campo Santa Margherita.
Thus Caffé del Doge isn’t necessarily the best coffee from an Italian region that, despite its history, is no longer regarded for its coffee. Then lose freshness by transporting the roasted beans half-way around the world… then serve them at a Caffé del Doge café here in Palo Alto (when they are no where to be found in their native Venice)…
When you put it in context, there doesn’t seem to be much of a real brand attraction other than the romantic notion that they come from Venice. So will I go over and check them out? You bet! I love pretending I’m in Venice as much as anyone, and I have the tazzina in my collection to prove it.
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There are two cafes in Venice with the Caffe del Doge brand name, near the Rialto bridge (the original) and Piazza San Marco. They’ve existed since 2003. The fact that you didn’t find them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Many hotels, restaurants, cafes, and store carry Caffe del Doge brands, but the quality of what you drink is really in the hands of people that prepare the coffee. In order to really grasp understand the quality of the coffee you are better left to do so at the Caffe del Doge cafes.
[...] With my kitchen currently getting the bulldozer (i.e., reconstruction) treatment, home espresso operations have come to a screeching halt. What better time to forage for espresso? Last week I reported that Caffé del Doge opens in Palo Alto, and this morning I decided to pay a visit. [...]
[...] Going back to my records, I last had my last espresso there in May 2004. Unfortunately, I did not write up a detailed review — largely because I did not think it was worthy of one. But did I note in my travel journal, “Caffè Florian: I got a very lame café (€5) served with water.” Even the Caffé del Doge near the touristy Rialto Bridge would have been acceptable. But Caffè Florian? It is the sort of place where American and German tourists pay top dollar to fall in love with the illusion that they are enjoying the best espresso available in Italy. [...]
[...] chain of Venetian cafés opened in 2003 (thanks to poster, claudietta, for the corrections) and has since spread to areas as far and wide as Budapest, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo. This Palo Alto [...]