Caffé DeLucchi

"Rome wasn't burned in a day." 
~ Leo Rosten

(However, I believe it took a lot less time for Pompeii and Herculaneum to burn. 

And, contrary to popular belief, the rumour that Nero was playing the fiddle while Rome burned is historically inaccurate. The fiddle had not been invented at that time and Nero normally sang at public performances, and he was probably in Antium at the time of the fire.)

http://www.caffedelucchi.com/


Place: Caffé DeLucchi
Location: 500 Corso Cristòforo Colombo (on the corner of Stockton Street)
Hours: open Monday through Friday at 10:00am, Saturday and Sunday at 8:00am
Meal: Mushroom Spinach Pizza (Perche non "Funghi Spinaci Pizza"? Immano.) ~ mushrooms medley, spinach, Mozzarella & Fontina[1], and sunny eggs; and for a breakfastary dessert (for which I still have yet to come up with a decent portmanteau word) un doppio Espresso and a soft cannolo[2] at 
Caffe Trieste

http://coffee.caffetrieste.com/

(Today happens to be International Women’s Day; hence, the first video. The second video is more of a EweToobular juxtaselection for the dessert stop.)


Sono tornato a Caffé DeLucchi (or Café DeLucchi or Caffè DeLucchi; take your pick; it's all a little linguistically and grammatically confusing; for simplicity reasons, I will just refer to it as Caffé DeLucchi; see last 'blog-entry from November 10th, 2013) per la colazione. To make it all even a little more confusing, their new menu simply has the name "DeLucchi" (senza "Caffè"… o "Caffé"… ou "Café") on it. Maybe they have been reading my ‘blog…

I think it is funny how all of the six sidewalk tables have actual tablecloths and cloth napkins on them, but all of the tables inside are bare (but with really cool copper-covered tops) and have paper napkins only.

There are several other interesting-sounding ideas on the breakfast portion of the menu (and these are definitely worth a return visit… or rèturn visit… or réturn visit even): Elvis in North Beach! (housemade peanut butter, applewood smoked bacon, fig jam, and bananas on a toasted ciabatta[3] roll with house potatoes; I would order this senza la carne maiale morto in decomposizione, of course; they actually added the exclamatory mark to the name of this dish!); Polenta Gorgonzola (warm polenta, melted Gorgonzola, clover honey, thick cut applewood smoked bacon, and poached eggs); Polenta Fungi (polenta, melted Fontina, braised kale, mushroom medley, & poached eggs); or Mediterranean Scramble (two eggs, Feta, Kalamata olives, roasted red bell peppers, red onion, spinach, artichoke, capers, with polenta & toast; which is also known as "La Frittata Vegetariano Lavello della Cucina"). 

This had a strange culinary chiaroscuro of flavours working here and I liked it a lot. It was made with lots of baby spinach and the "medley of mushrooms" seemed to be three different types (definitely not for the faint of fungi). There were two "sunny eggs" on top of the Pizza; normally you would just get a breakfast Pizza with one only. There was no tomato sauce on this Pizza, which I would have preferred, but it was all still very good. 

For condimentary supplements, Caffé DeLucchi offers three types of Tabasco® Brand Pepper Sauce: original red, Green (jalapeño), and Chipotle. I went with a little of my own The Wiltshire Chilli Farm
smoked Chipotle chilli sauce (Thanks, Cindy & Greg! I am almost halfway through this bottle ~ I am not sure if that is being optimistic or pessimistic, though.) on about half of the Pizza.

Pizza for breakfast is always great! Add a scoop of Chocolate and Coffee Ice Cream (Cioccolato e Caffè Gelato), a side of French fries (patate fritte), and serve this with a Beer (Birra), and you may just have the World's Most Perfect and Complete Breakfast!

I had intentionally skipped any Coffee (o Caffè… ou Café) with the meal because I knew that I wanted to head over to Caffe Trieste (just a few blocks away) afterward for dessert. I should probably note that 
Caffe Trieste also spells the name of their establishment senza accento grave; more than likely so as to not cause any undue confusion with un intelligentone linguistica like myself. I was planning on getting a standard ricotta-filled cannolo, but I saw something in their glass display case that looked interesting and had to ask exactly what it was. I was told it was a "soft cannoli", which I had never heard of before. It was basically a long doughnut-tube filled with a custard filling. This was also available in a Chocolate custard filling, too. It was very good, but I still prefer the standard cannoli better.

One of these days I should probably do a series of 'blog-entries specifically dedicated to the caffès (or "caffés" or cafés) of North Beach.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Mushroom Spinach Pizza ~ 6.5 (probably 0.1 or 0.2 higher if it had any tomato sauce on it); doppio Espresso con cannolo morbido ~ 7.0


1. Oh, come on now! It seems that Billy-boy and his Spell-checkering Nazi porco-cani do not want to acknowledge this easily recognizable Italian cow's milk cheese. 

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer of the day:

"Cannolo" (singular)/"cannoli"* (plural) means "little tube" in Italian, with the etymology stemming from the Latin "canna" (meaning "cane"** or "reed").

*(Guess which software company's auto-spellchecker does not seem to recognize this extremely ubiquitous Italian/Sicilian dessert?)
**(See? Sometimes this cunning linguistic stuff isn't always cerebrum chirurgia.)

3. (see footnote #1; bastardi stupidi)