Food and drink are as close to Italy’s heart as beautiful clothes and fast cars. Italian food styles have a big influence on American culture.

‘Wake up and smell the coffee’ may be a forceful invitation to get acquainted with reality but is there any more evocative smell than real coffee, made from freshly-ground beans? Just thinking about it can bring a smile to one’s face. Percolators have been around a while and the steady plop-plop as they go through their process is a familiar sound – but all it does is feed your impatience. If you want a good cup of coffee, you want it now, not in half an hour!

The latest trend for the impatient is the cafetiere. It has the virtue of delivering coffee quickly but it uses a lot of raw material and it doesn’t really deliver the aroma that’s part of the whole experience. For a proper cup of real coffee, you need a proper espresso machine – as coffee bars, restaurants and homes across the country have found. Nothing else provides the experience and the quality of the real thing.