On Italian Design and Worthy Machines
01
I have four Italian machines. My first is a Rocket Cellini semi-commercial espresso machine, purchased in 2010 when we lived in our brick Italianate Baltimore town house. Good espresso was much harder to find in Charm City than it is in Seattle, so I bought a Worthy Machine.
My Mazzer grinder next to my Rocket Cellini in my Seattle kitchen, Autumn 2019.
Nine years later, I still admire its shiny, silver beauty and clear, simple design affordances every morning while grinding coffee in my second Italian machine, purchased in 2015.
02
My Mazzer burr grinder is more functional than beautiful, sitting on my counter with its bulbous hopper on top and short metal arms extending to hold the porta-filter, like an awkward toddler reaching with malproportioned limbs. Together, these machines occupy almost a full section of limited counter space. But, being Worthy Machines, they deserve it.
03
For making legitimate gelato, of course you need an Italian machine. I bought our Lello 4080 Musso Lussino this year so we could finally sell our single-origin chocolate gelato. I started experimenting with the ice cream attachment on my Kitchen-Aid mixer a couple of summers ago, but quickly realized there was no way that would scale. Nor was the quality of what came out of the Kitchen Aid good enough. And so, I searched again for another Worthy Machine, this time looking on eBay where I found the Musso Lussino for ~$600, half what it would cost new. Like my Rocket Cellini, it is simple, elegant, and gleaming stainless steel. Easy to operate. Easy to clean. Easy to love.
04
My Vespa after a spin downtown during an unseasonably dry November day in Seattle. Kerry Park, December 16, 2019.
There’s no making of food involved with my fourth Italian machine, a 2009 Vespa LX150 purchased this summer after a trip to Vietnam. But it is shiny and blue and proportioned as only Europeans proportion things. It’s a gorgeous machine, absolutely unnecessary for my day-to-day life, which is exactly why I love it.
We love that our chocolate making endeavors require the employ of beautiful machines. Machines that gleam and grind and hiss and steam. Machines that churn and shine and freeze and process agricultural ingredients into delicious food. Without machines, I doubt we would have the diverse culinary experiences that we have today. We would have no gelato or espresso or cocoa powder or chocolate or any other number of foods we love without beautiful, functional, precisely-engineered practical machines.
