Anticafe - Roma

The cafe culture in Italy means that it is usually frowned upon to work robotically all day on a laptop in cafes, especially during lunch and dinner times. This means it can be hard to find places where you can settle down and work and enjoy coffee at the same time. Anticafe is a novel concept you pay for the time you spend and not for the food and drink. Which is fine in itself as long as you don’t anticipate an extensive menu of fine cuisine to be made available to you. Indeed, apart from the coffee, everything is self service. Food is basic: a tart, crisps, bread (and a toaster), jam, plus cola, water and iced tea in the fridge. WiFi is good. Place was suitably quiet for me to get work done. Power outlets are plentiful. Staff looked a little bored, but I can’t blame them as they are less a barista/waitress and more a library invigilator.

I am in Rome for a month and needed to find a professional work space for remote work. I have used Anticafe in Paris (and other co-working spaces across Europe and the UK) so I expected a level of service that would suit my needs. The Anticafe in Rome is a truly terrible example of a co-working space. The entire space is filthy- the floor looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in 6months. The work surfaces are dirty and sticky. The shared sex toilet is filthy and stank. The food and beverage on offer was minimal and poor quality. And the internet crashed. So for a full day stay of €16 the experience was a disaster. Whilst the 3 guys ‘working’ at the venue were nice enough, the owner of this place really needs to pay attention. This is by far the worst of any co-work space I have ever visited. I had expected to be able to work from here for the next month- absolutely will not be visiting again.

So rude and pretentious. I waited at the front desk only to realize the person who could help me was sitting about 10 feet away, choosing to ignore me. I finally had to walk up to a group of hipsters to ask for some guidance. I’m no stranger to coffee and WiFi, parking myself and working on my computer in various coffeehouses my entire life. You need to mark your time in some way, so obviously I would need to know how to do this, and also to grab a coffee, and the so called “snacks”. There were vague directions which explained the concept of the place, but nothing specific with regard to how to get coffee and “snacks” (basically a bag of chips). The guy I finally managed to nudge a response out of couldn’t have seemed more bothered and annoyed by my “intrusion”. What a joke. I don’t think Italy has quite caught on to this type of experience, which is fine, but this place acts like they invented the concept of coffee, and WiFi access in the SAME space (how novel and innovative), and so they come off looking embarrassing, frankly, to anyone who knows better.

Very positive atmosphere and amazingly delicious coffee! recommend them for those who want to find a cozy and comfortable place for the work.

The place is nice and the owner extremely friendly and helpful. little to say about food and drinks, they are free and that is enough. tendingly quiet when the owner is there, much less quiet when it is replaced in the afternoon: uninterrupted and noisy talk at the reception.