Feeling kinda blue? Long dark days got you down? Need a mid-morning pick-me-up? The Italians have a trick up their fashionable sleeves: they call it caffè corretto, literally "corrected coffee." It's a shot of espresso enlivened with a shot of grappa (distilled from pressed grapes in the photo at left, taken in Palermo, Sicily), making a more concentrated and bitter version of Irish coffee. The volatility of the grappa enhances the rich coffee aroma, which you savor for a few seconds before draining the cup in one gulp. Now it's the coffee's turn to tame the fiery brandy, turning its flame into a gentle glow.
Travis Rosenthal, who owns two Latin-themed restaurants, Tango and Rumba, at the intersection of Pike & Boren, has now taken over an Italian spot named PaneVino and rechristened it Corretto. To run the kitchen he hired Laura Licona from La Spiga; to run the bar, Noah Momyer from Ba Bar, and for the all-important job of "director of coffee," barista Brandon Paul Weaver from Slate.
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