Italian Brew

By Naperville Magazine
Appears in the November 2024 issue.

By Peter Gianopulos

Lavazza Naperville opens anew

This may come as a shock to some, but the recently renovated Lavazza Naperville café in CityGate Centre has no interest in brewing coffee drinks that taste like candy bars. It doesn’t serve apple-crisp oat-milk Frappuccinos or pumpkin-cream cold-brew refreshers topped with nondairy vanilla sweet-cream foam. Let Starbucks be Starbucks. At Lavazza Naperville, the baristas are far more interested—and how do we put this delicately?—in serving real Italian coffee.

The café, which originally opened in 2013, has an agreement to exclusively serve Lavazza products prepared according to Lavazza methods on Lavazza equipment. Shrewd move, considering Lavazza has been an Italian favorite since 1895 and claims to be one of the first brewers—if not the very first—to blend different coffee beans to produce exceptionally smooth and nuanced flavors. Lavazza takes coffeemaking so seriously that it recently invited baristas from Naperville to train with some of its brewing experts and then installed a brand-new espresso machine to ensure the results are as smooth as anything you’d find on holiday in Milan.

The recent makeover has completely updated the café’s old Ferrari-red-meets-ricotta-cream aesthetic, creating a warmer, more inviting space flush with dark blue hues, cozy wooden accents, and plenty of clean white lines. The café’s offerings are pure Italia: classic foam-topped cappuccinos; smooth drip coffees; plus an array of bakery items, snackable lunch treats, and gelato flavors. And for those who can’t quite kick their Frappuccino habit? Lavazza has a solution for that: an espresso spiked with melted chocolate and a hint of Lavazza’s signature orange sauce.

“Great coffee is product of great beans and experienced coffeemakers,” says Brandon Sheldon, the vice president of operation for CityGate Hospitality, which manages the café and other restaurants in the Arista Hotel. “But being able to enjoy coffee in this beautiful and expanded new space comes with its benefits, too.”

Photos: CityGate Hospitality LLC.