| rev:text
| - +1 for coffee.
-1 for gelato.
+1 for variety.
-1 for sandwich quality.
+1 for being in Palazzo.
-1 for having Palazzo pricing.
+1 for late night, after gambling/clubbing hours.
-1 for attracting gaggles of drunk-assed Tara Reid wannabes.
+1 for being near the garden & fountains where you can sit.
-1 for being next door to CUT & its ignorant, sheep-like clientele. (See my review)
I don't know how judge this place. I've clicked back and forth between 3-stars then 4-stars then 3-stars then 4-stars over and over again.
SO WHAT? HOW WAS IT?
There's no secret to this place. It's a high-priced, semi-exotic coffee, gelato, crepe, and panini shop. It's just a branch of the Illy shops in Italy and the rest of Europe. The difference of course is that even with the exchange rate, coffee in frickin' Milan doesn't cost as much as in the Palazzo location.
The sandwiches do sort of remind me of salami sandwiches that I'd get while travelling from Milan to Torino or Cervinia in Italy. But none of them are really very good. The gelato is the same. All melt too quickly and there's less of a selection compared to Cocolini's. And none of them really stand out.
THE CRUX IS THEIR COFFEE:
Speaking as someone that travels to Italy often, going to Espressamente Illy for coffee at the Palazzo is kinda like going to a McDonalds in Japan. You start thinkin', "Who in got's name pays $8.99 for a gotdamned Royale with Cheese?" Then when you taste your burger, you find yourself goin', "WTF? This ain't no McDonald's Royale with Cheese." And then you eat it anyway. Because you spent $8.99 on it.
Coffee at Illy IN ITALY is really good pretty much across the board: Smooth & lip-smacking tasty. Italian coffee in general puts Starbucks' liquid burnt umber to shame. Nothing beats having a cup of hot Italian coffee off the ridge of an untouched mountain of frost in the Italian Alps before you snowboard down it and cause an avalanche subsequently burying the rural village below and creating mass hysteria and mayhem. Just like the Green Goblin. Yeah.
But I digress. This Palazzo shop doesn't represent Illy coffee well, I'm afraid. I get the feeling that they don't change the coffee as frequently as they should because cups of coffee here frequently taste a little bitter and have a bit of an acidic aftertaste. Very un-Illy like, IMO.
But on the other hand... it's the best coffee available. I mean, you don't wanna go to Starbucks and their hideous Crappuccino, do you? You'll be hard pressed to find a better cup elsewhere on the strip. And every time I cross over from the Palazzo to the Venetian to play Blackjack, I get a cup to go.
CONCLUSION:
Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. That's the only secret insight I've got to share with you because Espressamente Illy has no secrets and is pretty much a "what you see is what you get" kind of place. It's just a plain, ol' ordinary late night snack shop - not really at the same level of quality as its Italian brethren. I come because it's on the way to my blackjack tables. You'll probably come for some reasonably good coffee if you dread Starbucks... but that's it.
3-stars.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)