Boutique Coffee Science details the ratio of coffee to milk

The Italian writer Claudio Magris, who was born in Trieste in 1939, lamented in his famous book Microcosmi: "The empire is gone, but the city remains the same, like San Marco."

Which one does "Empire" refer to? In the same book, Margolis emphasizes that the symbol of San Marco Cafe is the Flying Lion of Venice, the symbol of the Duchy of Venice in those days. In 1720 Venice opened Italy's first café. The port city is no stranger to the kind of "mocha" coffee that originated in Yemen: diluted heavily with cream and topped with cinnamon and cocoa powder. Italy therefore has a long-standing affinity for coffee with "heavy cream and sugar" flavors. Even today, Italian baristas are adept at juggling coffee-to-milk ratios and wordplay: "Caffemacchiato" is coffee with a little hot milk;"Latte Macchiato" is coffee with a little milk. This tradition is certainly not lost on the cafes of Trieste. Joyce had only been in Paris for three days when the long-rumored café legend took place: Joyce met with Beech, the owner of Shakespeare's bookshop, at the Paris Café Double-Couple to finalize the publication of Ulysses. As early as the 1830s, there were more than a hundred cafés registered in Trieste. Famous old cafes that still operate today include Tommaseo, Degli Specchi, Tergeste, Stella Polare and San Marco. Jan Morris, in her famous travelogue on Trieste, describes these cafes as "maintaining a bourgeois atmosphere" into the twenty-first century. As for the typical "bourgeois atmosphere" of the late 19th century, the Slovenia poet Tomaz Salamun described it: "They are solid, bearded, lifelong dreamers and bankers." However, this description does not apply exactly to St. Mark's Cafe. San Marco is not the oldest cafe in Trieste, but its unique cultural tradition makes it a famous sight for "literati worship". Between the two world wars, San Marco became a gathering place for people with different political or cultural views. In The Miniature World, Saint Mark is described as "Noah's Ark." The oldest café in Trieste is Tomaseo, which dates back to the Habsburg period. Its interior is classically elegant, it is close to the opera house, and there are countless musicians such as Mahler and Toscanini on the Who's Who list. Even in lean times Joyce fought for opera opportunities and prided himself on having an ancestral tenor voice. Joyce's view of these famous cafés may be found in a letter he wrote home from Rome in 1906:"I had to go to a Greek restaurant where Amir, Thackeray, Byron, Ibsen and others were regulars." The Greek restaurant in the letter is the famous Greek cafe in Rome. Keats was seriously ill in Italy and did not forget to ask Shelley to take him to visit it. Thackeray and Byron aside, Ibsen was Joyce's idol for many years and the main source of motivation for his study of Danish. In the same letter Joyce complained about the high price of coffee at the Greek Cafe and reminded his brother in Trieste to send him a newspaper. Since Trieste, cafes have been Joyce's main source of free newspapers, and Joyce often spends time in cafes after lunch and before dinner, even if the bottoms of her trousers are worn thin and must be covered by a tight coat in summer. Joyce reads newspapers, writes letters, and responds to newspaper advertisements for foreign language tutors. He used to write home blaming him for missing out on two well-paid tutors because he didn't get a remittance in time, didn't have money to go to a cafe to read a newspaper. Joyce was a rare finesse, and would list bills in letters home. These bills show that he usually spends 0.15 lire for afternoon coffee in Rome, and that his consumption in Trieste can be estimated accordingly. Joyce's coffee is often the cheapest "basic" in the shop, compared with 0.55 lire for his wife and son's afternoon coffee. Joyce's bill contains far more wine than coffee, and so does his work. One of the few examples is this passage: "The boss puts on the table a steaming, almost overflowing cup of high-quality mixed drink called coffee...... as the saying goes, it is immoral to nitpick." Mr Bloom thought it would be better to stir, or try to stir, the lumps of sugar at the bottom of the glass. Take a sip now.' When he had finished stirring his coffee, he tried to persuade her. Stephen, persuaded to taste it at least, lifted the heavy mug by the handle from the spilled brown liquid and took a sip of the inedible drink." This is the passage in Ulysses where Bloom pulls Stephen to sober up. Ulysses is set in Dublin, but many scholars believe Bloom's image was influenced by Joyce's experiences in Trieste. On this level, take Ulysses to Trieste to find the original Joyce coffee, which may be used as a reference. Even among professional scholars, talking about the implications of Ulysses is still a minor event. Fortunately, most scholars have agreed that there is a sense of drift, positive or negative, implicit in the book. Joyce said late in life,"Trieste ate my liver." No one dared to speculate whether the master of words was speaking of Trieste or whether he was borrowing the word Trieste itself for sadness.

"Caffemacchiato" is coffee with a little hot milk;"Latte Macchiato" is coffee with a little milk.