Caffè Trieste is an internationally known coffeehouse,

retail store Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

, and former

franchise Franchise may refer to: Business and law * Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees * Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. The original cafe, opened in 1956, was the first

espresso Espresso (, ) is a coffee-brewing method of Italian origin, in which a small amount of nearly boiling water (about ) is forced under of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso can be made with a wide variety of coffee beans a ...

-based coffeehouse on the West Coast of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Caffe Trieste is considered a San Francisco institution and a local hub for

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

s, and beat culture.

History

In 1951, Giovanni Giotta (aka "Papa Gianni," 19202016) and his family emigrated to the United States from

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. He had been born and raised in the small

fishing town A fishing village is a village, usually located near a fishing ground, with an economy based on catching fish and harvesting seafood. The continents and islands around the world have coastlines totalling around 356,000 kilometres (221,000 ...

of Rovigno D'Istria,

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

(a part of Italy before World War II and Italian-speaking part of the former Habsburg Austria-Hungary), and had been living Monfalcone, Italy from 1947-51. When Giotta first came to San Francisco, he experienced financial difficulties. He approached the priests at Saints Peter and Paul Church for help. As he explained, "We had nothing, no place to stay, no bread to eat. The father put us with a family and found me a job.” He worked as a window-washer and was known to sing while working. In the United States, Giotta missed the

and the coffeehouses of

Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into prov ...

. A cozy central European Habsburg coffeehouse culture had established itself there. American coffee culture of the 1950s focused on

instant coffee Instant coffee is a beverage derived from brewed coffee beans that enables people to quickly prepare hot coffee by adding hot water or milk to coffee solids in powdered or crystallized form and stirring. Instant coffee solids (also called sol ...

that people made at home; people would purchase pre-ground beans that typically lacked flavor. By contrast, Trieste had a rich cafe history. It had been a part of both the Austro-Hungarian Empire and

, and was known for its blend of Italian,

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n, Balkan,

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, Venetian, and

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

cultural influences. It was also known for its literary residents, such as

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

and

Italo Svevo Aron Hector Schmitz (19 December 186113 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo (), was an Italian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer. A close friend of Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, Svevo ...

. Finally, the city was famous for its coffee. In 1719, Trieste had become a "free port" under Hapsburg law, and it became a key point in the trade of coffee beans from the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. Cafes began to sprout up in Trieste as early as 1748; some historic cafes, such as Cafe Tommaseo (founded in 1830) and Caffè degli Specchi (founded in 1839) still exist in the twenty-first century. Coffee brands, such as Hausbrandt (founded in 1892) and

Illy Illycaffè S.p.A. (branded and stylised as illy) is an Italian coffee company specializing in espresso, headquartered in Trieste. Illy markets its coffee globally in silver and red pressurized, oxygen-free cans; operates a network of cafes on s ...

(founded in 1933) were also established in the city. In 1956, Giotta received the opportunity to take over Piccola Cafe, a small business located at 601 Vallejo Street in the North Beach. He renamed his new business Caffè Trieste, after the city of Trieste. The cafe was the first espresso house on the West Coast. Giotta imported and roasted the beans, which was not yet common in American cafe culture."Caffe Trieste's Influence Percolates Through Area"
The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2010 The cafe quickly became popular among the neighborhood's primarily Italian residents. "It was all Italian people," Giotta said of the neighborhood, "But I got the American people to like cappuccino.""50 Years of Art and Coffee"
by Cecilia M. Vega, ''San Francisco Chronicle'', April 1, 2006 For decades, the cafe has been known to have opera singers on Saturday. Franchise locations were opened in

Sausalito Sausalito (Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, and about north of San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. Sausalito's ...

(1970s-2008),

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

(2004), Oakland, and

Monterey Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bot ...

. In 2016, Caffe Trieste became a legacy business in San Francisco. That same year, Giotta died. In 2017, a family dispute broke out over the management and future of the business. As a result, the Berkeley and Oakland locations, which were under the ownership of 4 Musketeers, S.P. LLC, severed ties with Caffe Trieste and changed the names of the business in 2017. They cited the family dispute as the reason behind the move.

Meeting place for authors and artists

Caffè Trieste became a convenient meeting place for Beat movement writers like

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

(a lifelong regular),

Alan Watts Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was an English writer, speaker and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions of Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu ...

, Jack Kerouac,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

, Richard Brautigan,

Bob Kaufman Robert Garnell Kaufman (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) was an American Beat poet and surrealist as well as a jazz performance artist and satirist. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the "black American ...

Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrou ...

Michael McClure Michael McClure (October 20, 1932 – May 4, 2020) was an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous ...

, Kenneth Rexroth, and

Neeli Cherkovski Neeli Cherkovski (born Nelson Cherry; July 1, 1945) is an American poet and memoirist, who has resided since 1975 in San Francisco. Biography Born in Santa Monica, California, Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. In the 1970s he wa ...

, who lived in North Beach in the 1950s and 1960s.

Jack Hirschman Jack Hirschman (December 13, 1933 – August 22, 2021) was an American poet and social activist who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry and essays. Biography Hirschman was born in New York City to a Russian Jewish family. He received a B.A. ...

, former

Poet Laureate A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch ...

of San Francisco, has also been a regular patron. In addition to other writers and poets, painters such as Peter Le Blanc and Don Moses and photographers Joe Rosenthal ( Pulitzer Prize winner), Christopher Michel, Jimo Perini, and

Christopher Felver Christopher Felver (born October 1946) is an American photographer and filmmaker who has published several books of photos of public figures, especially those in the arts, most notably those associated with beat literature. He has made numerous f ...

, other celebrities counting themselves among the Trieste Aficionados include

Paul Kantner Paul Lorin Kantner (March 17, 1941 – January 28, 2016) was an American rock musician. He is best known as the co-founder, rhythm guitarist, and vocalist of Jefferson Airplane, a leading psychedelic rock band of the counterculture era. He con ...

Jack Sarfatti Jack Sarfatti (born September 14, 1939) is an American theoretical physicist. Working largely outside academia, most of Sarfatti's publications revolve around quantum physics and consciousness. Sarfatti was a leading member of the Fundamenta ...

Joey Reynolds Joseph Pinto, better known as Joey Reynolds, is a long-time radio show host and disc jockey. Reynolds' broadcasting career started on TV in Buffalo at WGR TV 2 and he worked at various stations, including at WNBC. Career His first radio job was ...

and

Mal Sharpe Malcolm Sharpe (April 2, 1936 – March 10, 2020) was an American television and radio personality with roots in San Francisco, California. In the early 1960s, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-born Sharpe collaborated with Jim Coyle to create a seri ...

. San Francisco politician

Aaron Peskin Aaron Dan Peskin (born June 17, 1964) is an American elected official in San Francisco, California. He serves as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing District 3, and is currently Dean of the Board. He was elected in ...

is also a cafe regular. Local figures have discussed the cultural impact of the cafe. As described by Mark Bittner, "I think of Caffe Trieste as one of the last strongholds—actually the true center— of what made this neighborhood so fabulous." Tony Long, local journalist and author, described it as the "living room" of its regulars. Jack Hirschman remembered, "When I arrived in 1972, (Papa Gianni’s sister) Iolanda fed me for about 6 months because I had no money. Much later, before the official celebration at Koret Auditorium for my becoming

, Ida and The Trieste held a party for me first." The cafe has been featured in several movies, on television, radio, in magazines, and in dozens of photography, tourism and other books, ranging from local to national and international in scope. Francis Ford Coppola wrote much of the screenplay for ''

The Godfather ''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same title. The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caa ...

'' while sitting in the Caffè Trieste."Gianfranco Giotta dies, owner of Caffè Trieste"
SF Gate, September 19, 1999 Caffe trieste (8482229699).jpg, Papa Gianni (left) in 2013 Jack Hirschman & Lawrence Ferlinghetti (7490671430).jpg, Jack Hirschman & Lawrence Ferlinghetti Caffe Trieste (8406647791).jpg, Playing chess Caffe Trieste (8481096480).jpg, Music

References

External links

Official website

Caffè Trieste Photo Gallery by Christopher Michel

"Caffe Trieste's Influence Percolates Through Area"
The Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2010 Coffeehouses and cafés in the United States Italian-American culture in San Francisco North Beach, San Francisco Restaurants in San Francisco Restaurants established in 1956 1956 establishments in California {{Restaurants in San Francisco

History

Meeting place for authors and artists

See also

References

External links