Isa’s Coffee Around The World

This is a charming small luxury hotel (SLH) within the center of historical Venice.  Typically, Italian hotels are not famous for their breakfast buffets so are expectations were not high (especially not for a 4 star hotel) but at least a good coffee?   No….  Sadly the cappuccino offered was prepared using an automatic machine and from Segafreddo coffee (the worst robusta coffee one can buy in Italy).  The frothed milk was not silky and the coffee watery and metallic. What a pity! Grade 2/10

Caffè Florian is a coffee house situated in the Procuratie Nuove of Piazza San Marco, Venice. Established in 1720, it is one of the oldest coffee houses in continuous operation in Italy, and one of the oldest in the world (the oldest being Café Procope founded in Paris in 1686). The coffee house has always attracted notable people from Goldoni, Goethe, Casanova to Lord Byron, Proust and Charles Dickens, to mention a few. Beautiful Rooms and friendly staff welcome you to this extraordinary house of history and culture. So I was really looking forward to tasting the amazing coffee everybody was raving...

This week I find myself in one of the top luxury hotels in the center of Amsterdam. The hotel is modern, yet classy.  Given that Amsterdam has a reputation for good coffee (and some of the best roasting machines), I was curious about the breakfast coffee.  I ordered cappuccino and received a very reasonable coffee, properly brewed, using beans from Caffe Buscaglione, a well-known coffee roaster in Rome.  Although the blend was a mix of robusta and arabica, so not 100% arabica, one could tell that some thought had gone into the coffee selection by the hotel manager.  Grade 7/10...

The Radisson Blu Elizabete Hotel is a large, modern hotel in the center of Riga.  Although the hotel was light and clean, the breakfast coffee was a disaster.  Although the price for breakfast was EUR 20 per person, there was absolutely no service and one had to queue up at an automatic Franke coffee machine to make one’s own cup of coffee or tea.  We tried the cappuccino from the machine but it turned out to be totally undrinkable…. Not really coffee at all but hot, milky water. Yuck.  Nothing else to say… Grade: 1/10