There oughta be a law.
Sure, I get it: things change; change is good (though the jury’s still out on that one); time marches on. But I’m sorry— your morning coffee routine should be off-limits for all of that. Some things must be protected. There oughta be a law.
It tends to raise eyebrows in America when you talk about going to a bar every morning. But in Italy, it’s a way of life. That’s because a bar in Italy is a far more all-encompassing enterprise than its American namesake. In the morning, an Italian bar is a coffee shop (the caffeine-focused kind, not the Dutch version); in the afternoon, it’s a lunch counter; in the evening, it’s a tavern, gambling hall, youth center, and living room, all at once. A bar in Italy is like a British pub with pastries, or a French cafe without the frites.
Neither C nor I drank coffee before we started spending time in Italy, which is like having your first car be a Ferrari—highly seductive and probably a little dangerous. It certainly sets unrealistic expectations. I will admit to having an unusually strict criteria for what constitutes a proper Italian bar.
Da Capo is an unassuming storefront, a sliver of a building squashed between a bank and a copy shop. There are a few tables set out on the sidewalk in front, and a discreet brown awning that camouflages into the brick and stone building behind it. I don’t know how long it had been there before I discovered it by accident. It’s the kind of place that when you bring people from the neighborhood, they always say, “I never knew this was here.”
Even getting in the door is not always easy. The front room—a thin galley with the bar on one side and a counter along the opposite wall— fills up fast. Add in a couple of dogs, a stroller, and the crowd waiting for their orders and it’s like running a gauntlet to get to the larger seating space in the back.
That back room is dominated by a skylight that lets in only as much sun as can seep between the surrounding buildings, and a considerably greater amount of rain when the sun’s not shining. Between the track lighting and the jungle of plastic plants, the space always reminds me of a coffeehouse where I used to see bad folksingers perform when I was growing up in Portland, Oregon.
Yet from the moment that C and I first tried Da Capo—about five years ago—we made an unspoken decision that this would be our place. Maybe it was the vintage Faema coffee machine, or the soccer jerseys mounted and framed above the bar that sold us. It could have been the Sanremo in the Sixties soundtrack or the schiuma on the cappuccino. It was everything we wanted in an Italian coffee bar, and remarkably, it wasn’t actually in Italy.
Da Capo was in New York City, just a few blocks from our apartment. When we weren’t at our house in Le Marche, it would become our Italian home away from home,. Little did we know how essential that would be.
We had just returned from Italy in February of 2020, when Covid first struck New York. Soon our plans to return to Europe in the spring were cancelled; the summer vacation was axed a few months after that. It would be almost two years before we could return to our house in Le Marche, and even then, we made it only for a few days before another wave struck, forcing us into New York exile once more.
Aside from a few weeks at the beginning of the crisis, Da Capo was open throughout the pandemic. Located on 97th Street near Mt. Sinai Hospital and the temporary emergency care center erected in Central Park, the bar operated from the doorway. Mino, Da Capo’s manager, shoveled takeout coffees to worn-down healthcare workers and the rest of us desperate enough for human interaction to wander over.
As the months ground on, this was as close to Italy as we could get. Every espresso, panini or spritz was a sensory postcard from a place that existed more in our memories than in that sad, strange present . Da Capo sustained us, and we became regulars, part of a random tribe weathering the storm together, like one of those incongruous all-star casts in a Seventies disaster film.
By the time things got back to normal, things had changed. The daughter of one family, a teenager who spent most of those years buried in her books in the back room, was headed to university. Nico, the irrepressible barista whose joyous laugh lit up some of New York’s darkest mornings, bought a rowhouse in Baltimore and left the city.
The regulars first started hearing rumblings about Da Capo closing last month. There had been a half-hearted remodel in the summer while Mino was on a long vacation to his native Egypt, but when he returned, his dark prognostications about change in the air seemed increasingly credible.
To be sure, Mino has a “the grass is never really green on either side because there are powers bigger than us and what can we do?” attitude that would rival that of a Sicilian farmer for its suspicion of impending doom. But it’s never been particularly clear who actually owns the bar, and with rents rising around the city, it was easy to assume the worst. When it became official that closing day would be October 31, the regulars took it with stunned resignation.
Being in New York, Da Capo’s crowd is diverse in a way that an Italian one could never be. On any given day, young people in hospital scrubs are at one table grabbing a coffee before their shift or a glass of wine after their all-nighter. A squad of Italian parents, fresh from dropping off kids at the International School take over one corner and create a happy cacophony of rapid-fire chiacchiericcio. There are writers and journalists (I saw Carl Bernstein having a drink at the bar last week), building superintendents, and jazz musicians like Charles and Avi, who sometimes perform in the back room in the evening. There’s rarely a conflict, unless someone tries to follow up on a slow order, which is sure to earn a reprimand from Mino:
“I got you… I got you, okay? I’m just one person here. What am I gonna do?”
Now all of us ask each other where we’ll go each morning and everyone shakes their head and tries to offer an empathetic smile. But we just look lost—survivors from the Poseidon Adventure wandering bereft on an island, searching for signs of civilization.
In the Italian town where we have our home, courier services will sometimes deliver packages for locals straight to the bar, figuring the recipient is sure to stop by sooner or later. We had the airlines drop our lost luggage there once. It’s always good to have a place where, as the Cheers song put it, everybody knows your name. Anyone who’s spent time in Italy knows the quiet elation of showing up at the bar a day or two into your visit and seeing your macchiato and cornetto ready before you order.
Whether it’s in a small town or big city, places like Da Capo are what tether us to where we live. When they go, it’s as if someone cut the rope to the anchor. There’s one less connection; one less thing drawing us back.
Sure, I know— it’s only a coffee spot. As is typical in New York, just when the final hours were approaching, there were rumors that Da Capo may survive after all under new management. Of course that just means it looks the same, but everything has changed. In the end, time marches on.
But couldn’t it stop for a coffee? There oughta be a law.
Thanks so much— really appreciate the kind comments. Actually just arrived in Italy— praying nothing has changed at my bar here. If it has, I’m done for. Thanks again.
Thanks so much for subscribing! That’s great about the move! Where will you be? I actually live in New York City, but we’ve had a home in Monteleone di Fermo for many years now. We’re in the process of trying to move there full-time, but that’s a work in progress (selling our NYC apartment, getting a visa, etc.) Look forward to staying in touch!