Enne Caffe

In the late 1930s, Giuseppe “Nino” Rolla’s sons watched as crackling flames browned delicate coffee beans in their father’s small Venetian café. In the mid-1990s, Giuseppe’s grandson Nicolo brought his family’s brewing heritage with him when he moved to the States, establishing Enne Caffe—named for the “N” in Nino—with his wife Samantha. Inside the café, a 7-foot-tall computerized roaster imported from Turkey prepares single-origin beans from Venezuela, Colombia, and other countries, and Nicolo, a bean-spotting virtuoso, uses finely tuned senses of sight and smell to monitor each small batch. Drawing on family lore, Nicolo re-creates Nino’s blends with a historian’s accuracy and fixes up modern english-toffee-flavored coffees whenever Dickensian orphans request them. Enne Caffe also stocks teas flavored with japanese sencha and tropical fruits, Monin flavored syrups, and smoothie bases that transform into frothy, spicy chai or white chocolate when mingled with ice in a blender. Enne Caffe fills cups in more than 80 businesses, such as restaurants and cafés, and delivers parcels directly to customers’ homes, where vacuum-sealed bags bearing the roasters’ red-and-white logo stand out against decorous porches or the dark mouths of inhabited caves.