A guide to Italy's wholesomely chaotic bar culture

 ROME -- ll bar is to Italy what the pub is to England - an institution to be found on every high street, often in multiples. A meeting point for the community, bars frequently have the kind of lengthy opening hours to rival a 24 hour city, even in the smallest towns. When visiting Italy it is impossible to avoid them and yet they are often overlooked, after-thoughts of the Italian experience. This is thoroughly undeserved, so let’s set the record straight.

 The bar in Italy is completely unique, especially from the anglo-perspective. Imagine having a post office, cafe and pub rolled into one. And if you’re fortunate enough to stumble across one of the many bars which is also a Tabaccaio (Tabacco shop), you’re in store (no pun intended) for the usual drinks offering plus cigarettes, stamps, bus tickets and even the ability to pay your utility bills. The Tabaccaio+bar combination can feel like a living-museum to twentieth-century material culture. All served under the cold bright lighting one would otherwise associate with a CIA interrogation room.

 The aesthetic merits consideration; a traditional bar would be composed of terrazzo flooring, dark wood and plenty of open glassware, but these are increasingly a minority in the bel paese. More frequent are the 90s and 2000s rehashes where mirrors and chrome furniture are used with such frequency you would think they were giving them away for free at the time of construction.

 Cue random art works, stacks of lighters and chewing gum at the till, lottery tickets on the wall and chairs last seen in a 90s sitcom. Almost all bars have a vintage aesthetic, as if the 2008 financial crisis marked a hard cut-off point for interior renovations in Italy. Of course the odd chain will have a more sophisticated look, but none of the charm.

 In many ways the bar is a reflection of Italy’s quirks. Take the organisation for example, it's more complicated than it needs to be - a feeling you’ll experience frequently in Italy. Your best bet is to go first to the Cassa - a separate till most commonly hosted by a disinterested employee of indeterminable age - communicate your order, pay, and then take your receipt to the banco - i.e., bar.

 The receipt has an almost mythical status in Italy, a land of much tax evasion and love for paper proofs. The concept of walking away from any till without a receipt is a kind of heresy here, akin to not saying “sorry” at the slightest inconvenience in England.

 With receipt in hand, you approach the bar - there is no queuing - and hope to catch the eye of an exhausted and underpaid barista who will make you the best cappuccino of your life for not much more than a Euro. You drink at the bar, or you pay more to sit down. This is not a cafè, very few sit for more than 15 minutes and no one is bringing a book.

 In the great-bar-scrum the priority of customers is also telling. It tends to go in the following order: Attractive Woman, Local, Old Person, Person of the Same City, Italian From Another Region, Young Person, and finally, Tourist (unless you fulfill multiple of the prior characteristics, upon which an intersectional analysis must be undertaken and things can get very complicated). This also happens to be the expected order of priority for most services in Italy.

 Most bars are owned by small independent owners, none of that private-equity-backed mass-chain-mulch you find in Northern Europe and America. The independent touch is reflected in the staff, if you go to a bar enough you’ll find your coffee tastes a little less burnt and comes with a smile.

 This is a country of who-you-know, and the bar is no exception. I once frequented a bar near my work for two years straight and got to know the family-owners very well. I met cousins of the family, celebrated their successes and commiserated their losses. Likewise they got to know me, their random inglese in Rome, for whom they offered discounted pastries and tips on Roman slang (Avoja!).

 Il bar is a microcosm of this fantastic country; a communal home, a symbol of Italy’s focus on affordable access to great produce with a side serving of mayhem. Nevertheless, this wholesome chaos is the only way I want to drink my coffee from now on.

 jp-jh