The Italian Connection

Caffe Vergnano 1882 Singapore serves authentic espressos – and wants you to drink them the way they should be.

A sturdy Belle Epoque coffee machine is the piece de resistance at Caffe Vergnano 1882 Singapore. It’s a chrome beauty that does all the heavy lifting at the first franchise here of Italy’s oldest family-owned coffee maker.

What it does is deliberate, even tedious, but it’s what makes the cafe’s espresso intense yet perfectly balanced, with not a hint of bitter aftertaste. It slow-roasts the beans (sourced from top plantations around the world, from Jamaica and India to Guatemala and Ethiopia) traditionally – using 18- to 22-minute cycles so that each bean’s aroma and qualities are extracted fully, as opposed to what happens in the five to six-minute turbo toasting that coffee giants employ for fast-to-serve coffee.