Il caffè sospeso – the made in Napoli tradition

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We’re back with another coffee blog today! Coffee culture in Italy is so vast there is always a lot to talk about especially if you look at different regions. Everyone has a different coffee tradition.

Today I want to explain what a caffè sospeso is. In English this means ”suspended or pending coffee”; it’s a cup of coffee paid in advance by the person before you as an act of kindness. 

This tradition was born in Naples and there are two theories:

The first one says that is was probably born during the Second World War. A time of great crisis where not everyone could afford an espresso, so people used to pay for an extra one and the barista would give it for free to the next person that asked for one.

According to the second one, when a group of friends used to go to get a coffee together they would get confused about who had a coffee and who hadn’t. So most of the times they would always pay for more coffees that they had consumed, leaving a free one for the next person that came in.

But regardless of how it was born, it has soon become a tradition that expanded all over the country and the world.

It even reached the New York Times where the journalist directly interviewed the owner of the Italian café, Pino di Stasio, that brought the tradition back to life around 2014. The name of the café is Caffè Gambrinus, and if you want to buy a caffè sospeso, you simply buy two and put the receipt in a container that has the shape of a coffee maker, the Moka. 

The writer Luciano de Crescenzo even decided to write a book about this Neapolitan tradition. In his book, he describes it with these words:

Quando un napoletano è felice per qualche ragione, invece di pagare un solo caffè, quello che berrebbe lui, ne paga due, uno per sé e uno per il cliente che viene dopo. È come offrire un caffè al resto del mondo.

The English translation is: ”When a Neapolitan is happy for whatever reason, instead of paying for one coffee, the one that they would drink, they pay for two, one for them and one for the next customer. It’s like offering a coffee to the rest of the world.”

So, what do you say if you want to order a ‘’suspended coffee’’ in Italian? The expression you can use when you are about to order your coffee is:

Vorrei due caffè per favore, uno per me e uno sospeso. I would like two coffees please, one for me and one suspended.

Next time you visit Naples, make sure to make this act of kindness, you never know you might be in need of a coffee.

A presto,

Francesca