Today when Italian people invite a friend to have a coffee in a bar they usually want to spend a while chatting in front of a coffee cup, telling each other what's new in their lives, discussing new ideas about a project or, often, asking their friend some advice about an important decision they may take. We could say that, for Italian people, coffee has become an excuse to spend some time with other people in an informal way both sitting at a table and standing in front of the bar's counter. This last way of having a coffee distinguishes the Italian culture from the others, in fact currently many people like having coffee, but in other cultures this beverage is often consumed sitting around a table, while Italians usually enter in a bar, have a coffee in front of the counter and go out in less than five minutes time. Another typical Italian occasion to have a coffee is when they go to visit a friend or a parent, in fact the first phrase that the householder will say is "Would you like a coffee?"; in this sense coffee could be equivalent to kindness and welcome; actually Italians offer coffee to almost anybody, from a close friend to the telephone man. Because of the Italians' passion for this beverage in Italian bars there is a wide variety of coffees. In fact they have different ways to serve coffee, from the traditional espresso which is served in the china cup, to the ristretto (less than 25 ml), to the espresso which is served in a glass cup, to the double espresso (two espressos in a cup which corresponds to about 50 ml).
In addition to these "simple" varieties there are others more elaborate that we are going to explain in the next pages.
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