I want to tell you about the kind and charitable tradition of buying a coffee for a stranger which originates in Naples, Italy. Researching the topic, I found it was quite a known phenomenon; only in my ignorance, I hadn’t heard of it before.
This is how I learned about it: Do you know Stanley Tucci? You must have seen him in a movie! He’s been everywhere, from The Hunger Games to, err...Fortitude. It’s in the latter show that I got so intrigued by this actor who’s popping up everywhere, that I finally looked him up. And I found that he’s of Italian descent (obvious from his last name, duh!), that he loves cooking and that he’s got a show “Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy” in which he’s exploring his ancestral homeland, its regions and cuisine. In one episode he takes us to Naples — Napoli. (Why do we call it Naples, when “Napoli” is prettier and easier to pronounce?) There, a Napoli’s police chief takes him to a street vendor for a coffee and orders “un caffé sospeso” — one suspended coffee. Which, he explains, is a tradition in Napoli, to pay for a coffee for someone who can’t afford it. A stranger who’s fallen on hard times could come to the vendor and ask for it, and they would get the coffee an earlier customer paid for.
The tradition was born out of hardship, as it’s often the case with charitable gestures and good food. Napoli is an ancient and densely populated city. Like many large ports, it was a harbour for a large population of low-income families who settled there in search of work and livelihood. They were particularly hard hit with every crisis, be it diseases, famine, economic downturns, or wars. The café sospeso is said to have started at the time of one such crisis, during or immediately after World War 2, when men would gather in a café looking for work and most not finding any. Which often meant they couldn’t afford even a coffee. So the “fortunate” ones who had secured work started buying two coffees, one for them and another “sospeso” — suspended order, for the less fortunate. The gesture soon transcended the city limits and country borders, and travelled all over the world as a “paying forward” notion, where some patrons would pay for a drink, sometimes even a meal. The establishment would then put up a receipt of the paid item on a board where a person in need could take it and claim it at the counter.
Instead of re-telling the whole tale which was already written in a lovely, heartfelt way by Kerry Hayes in the “Tasting Table” blog, I urge you to check it out for yourself straight at their website.
I find the simple, warm gestures like café sospeso very moving and inspiring, although, I admit, I have not yet done it myself, not in this shape. I bought coffee, sometimes with food, for the homeless, but it was always for a particular person who asked me for it. Now, I will look for an establishment which honours the paying forward tradition, and as soon as I find one, I am going to start doing it. Because, the times are again uncertain, and for many very difficult.
Parting video for today features an instrumental guitar melody titled, appropriately, “Café del Mundo”. Enjoy!