Man's journey from Italy’s coffee capital to Liverpool’s North Docks

Liverpool’s ‘only Italian coffee roaster’ Caffe Riccardo is bringing a community-spirited café to one of the city’s most intriguing areas

Known as the coffee and chocolate capital of Italy, the northern Italian town of Turin is known for its architecture, cuisine and breath taking views of the alps that rise to the west of the city.

It is also the birthplace of Riccardo Porfido, owner of one of Liverpool’s only Italian coffee roasters and the equally unique Caffe Riccardo on Regent Street.

Today Riccardo’s own expert coffee roasting skills can be found, not in Italy but in the heart of Vauxhall, having come a long way away from their roots.

Riccardo first opened the eponymous Caffe Riccardo on Regent Street in 2017 when the area had little by the way of cafes and restaurants.

But despite a somewhat unlikely location, Riccardo was always keen to make the café feel like home to anyone coming through its doors.

“We want our customers to be like friends and family - not just ‘next please, thank you, bye’” says Riccardo whose hospitality business was one of the first to come to Regent Street alongside the Invisible Wind Factory which opened in 2016.

Prior to this he was based for a short while on Love Lane, just a few streets away.

Holding this piece of the cafe’s history in high affection, a blue painting of the Love Lane railway arches, featuring his previous residence of arch 17, hangs above the cafe’s entrance.

“Number 17 - like the year we opened here!” Riccardo says.

It was only when the then-director of social enterprise and creative hub, Make CIC, visited Riccardo at Love Lane that things changed.

“He was walking his dog and came in for a drink. He liked my coffee and told me I should be in the centre [of Make]”, says Riccardo.

Keen to leave the beautiful but cold walls of the railway arch, Riccardo set up home as the central café in the atrium of the Regent Street creative centre.

Now Riccardo sees many of his customers come through the door from Make’s various resident social enterprises and businesses which include a candle-making business and a sign makers, as well as classes and events which range from wood-workshops to theatre shows.

“It’s a win-win,” says Riccardo, who worked hard to bring the café to life from a once empty studio space.

“It was completely empty. I built everything you see here”, says Riccardo pointing to what is now a large wooden yellow painted counter, complete with a glass cabinet of cannoli, a beer tap and a lever operated espresso machine from Italy.

Adjacent to his hospitality career which included owning a "successful" café in Turin, Riccardo worked in various manual labouring roles including as a mosaicist for world renowned home designers and tilers, Bisazza.

Behind the counter sits a small coffee roaster which supplies the café as well as providing a handful of custom orders to cafes around the city.

As we chat, customers enter giving friendly waves.

“We know each other by name. I love that”, says Riccardo.

One couple enjoying coffees Riccardo says are residents of the apartments recently developed in the Tobacco Warehouse. Other regular customers are residents of Make or those living or working in the area.

Despite the obvious charm of Regent Street’s businesses, the answer to the appeal of the area is more complicated.

While much of the area’s planned regeneration is still pending, for many businesses the area still presents a much-needed opportunity for larger work spaces at a cheaper price than in the city centre.

For Riccardo, while this factored in, there was something more personal that drew him to the area.

Before Liverpool, Riccardo and his wife lived in London where he spent many of his most fond London days at the city’s St Katharine Docks.

But looking for a cheaper place to set up home, they began to search for somewhere new.

“We’d never been to Liverpool before so we thought why not go there”.

Unsurprisingly with an existing affection for docklands it wasn’t long before Riccardo succumbed to the beauty held in the north of the city, in particular the nearby Titanic Hotel and the impressive architecture of the area's iconic warehouses.

Riccardo said: “Immediately we fell in love with Liverpool. The pace is so different to London. And the people are so friendly.

“This is a place for humans, London was a place for numbers”.

Caffe Riccardo now offers a welcoming space and home-roasted coffee to the area’s growing creative community. A garden area out the front with benches makes it a great spot to sit in the summer. Inside the space is suitable for working or catching up with friends or colleagues on leather sofas by big windows.

Riccardo himself lives in Walton with his wife.

Opening hours at the café are 10am to 4pm Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 3pm Saturday and the café is closed Sunday.