Election Section

Caffe Trieste, the North Beach institution that takes credit for popularizing espresso culture on the west coast, opened a Berkeley café last week. 

The cafe, at 2500 San Pablo Ave., is open late, until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturdays, until 10 p.m. other days. The owners said that they wanted create something new in the west Berkeley neighborhood, a welcome meeting spot for families and workers, as well as bring a new accent to the city’s storied coffee culture. 

“There are lots of coffee houses and cafes in Berkeley, it’s true,” said Berkeley resident Hal Brandel, one of the four owners of the new Caffe Trieste. “But this is an Italian coffee house. We serve an Italian style of coffee. Trieste is the coffee capital of the world. Yeah, you can get a cup of coffee anywhere, but this is an Italian experience.” 

And entering the cafe does create an Italianesque, or an Italian-American, flavor. The menu offers a full selection of espresso drinks, made from their own blend and roasted at their Portrero Hill plant, wine and beer (including Moretti), pannini, antipasta plates, Italian pizza, an array of specialty desserts, including canoli, tiramisu, and, of course, gelato and afogato, which is espresso poured over ice cream. 

Music completes the scene, ranging from Frank Sinatra to Italian opera. Giovanni Giotta, the founder of Caffe Trieste, plans to sing opera at the cafe on Sunday afternoons. He has performed with his family at the San Francisco shop since it opened and will now bring his act to Berkeley. 

Plans to open the Berkeley cafe began a few years ago when Brandel, a longtime regular at the North Beach cafe, convinced Giotta to come look at the Berkeley property he owned with Walter Wright. Arturo Guariniello, who ran the Caffe Trieste in Sausalito, runs the Berkeley shop. The four men own the cafe together. 

Giotta remembered his enthusiasm upon seeing the Berkeley location, “I said, what a place, che fantastico, so I said why not? I like the people of Berkeley, they are fantastic people. I love Berkeley.”  

Giotta—or Papa Gianni as everyone calls him—was eager to tell his life story to a new customer over an espresso the other day. He was born in Rovigno (now part of Austria) in 1920, near Trieste. The son of a fisherman, he remembers growing up poor and hungry and full of dreams of coming to the United States. 

He told stories of his years in the Navy during World War II. Afterwards, he settled down with his wife Ida and worked in the shipyards of Trieste. Then in 1951 he had the chance to immigrate and landed with family in San Francisco, where he took up window washing. 

A photograph of himself with a group of window washers from those years hangs on the wall of the new cafe, along with dozens of other photos chronicling the history of Cafe Trieste. The photos include many celebrity visits at the cafe over the years, including shots of Giotta singing with Luciano Pavarotti, having a drink with Laurence Ferlinghetti, making espresso with Bill Cosby, and many family gatherings and musical appearances at the cafe. 

Giotta is a energetic man with a great deal of confidence in his product and Caffe Trieste’s place in local coffee history. When he opened the Vallejo Street shop in 1956, he said, he introduced espresso to the Bay Area. 

“Back then espresso was not really known around here,” he said. “We exported this thing. We started cappuccinos and now today they are all over.” 

Even now that he has moved onto the home turf of Peet’s Coffee, Giotta’s said he is undaunted. 

“My name is strong and the coffee is good,” he said. “I’m afraid of nobody, not Starbuck’s, not Peet’s, nobody.” 

Or, to put it another way, Giotta said that he has been pulled to Berkeley by the people, and he was happy to oblige. 

“My name has been big for a half century and people would come to my cafe, many from Berkeley, and say, ‘why don’t you open a cafe in Berkeley?’, so I come to Berkeley so the people can be happy. It’s going to be excellent.”ª