Café Merenda

if you've got a slow morning with nowhere urgent to be, via del gazometro is the kind of street that rewards that. ostiense moves at its own pace, industrial in its bones but genuinely local in the way it feels, and café merenda sits right in that current. the coffee here is taken seriously without the performance some rome spots put on, which matters more than it sounds. you're not fighting for a table with tour groups. the cortado or whatever you order comes without ceremony, and that's the point. well regarded among people who actually live nearby, not just passing through. if you're working through a morning in the neighbourhood, this is where you end up, more than once.