The smell of coffee in Russell Square, near the British Museum in London, comes from one of the historic red telephone booths. Now that red box no longer needed for calls: it had been abandoned for some time. But a young Italian, Davide Astori, A 28-year-old native of Casatenovo, in the province of Lecco, has devised a way to bring it back to life: in those two meters and 51 centimeters he has created the first cabin-cafeteria, where he prepares a real espresso made to perfection.

Davide has moved in London when he was 19 years old, and since then he has always worked in the world ofhospitality and coffee shops. "I left Italy immediately after graduating to improve the language," he told "laRepubblica". "During the study period I worked first in McDonald's and later in Costa Coffee, but I always had the energy to create something of my own. However, the rents of the premises in the center have always made me desist, costs that are too difficult to bear to allow a small business to survive ".

Until the day when, thanks to a newspaper article, he discovered that many of the old telephone booths, owned by the British Telecommunication, were given to those who had good ideas in mind to reuse them. "The time to present mine, accepted within a few weeks, and then on 10 September I opened Caffè Astori, the first all-Italian cabin-cafeteria of London, complete with an official inauguration with my parents from Italy, my wife Nathalia, originally from Brazil, and her closest friends ".

At the Caffè Astori, which is open every day of the week, from 7 am to 5 pm, tourists stop, the students of the University of London, the employees of the offices of the neighborhood. For now, about fifty customers a day, to allow Davide to cover the monthly cabin rental costs, 360 pounds (about 410 euros), to which must be added the rent of the public land, the license fees and the expense for raw materials, which are of high quality. «We prepare exclusively Italian-style espresso and cappuccinos (the car is a Sanremo) using a Colombian coffee that is toasted once a week. Even the desserts we serve, brownies, carrots and polenta cakes, cookies and croissants, are prepared fresh every morning and are partly gluten free or vegan, made with exclusively organic ingredients .
Healthy ingredients, therefore, but also packaging respectful of the environment. "The cups in which we serve coffee, as well as forks, napkins and saucers are all 100% recyclable, while we do not sell water in classic plastic bottles, but in totally recyclable aluminum cans. Customers greatly appreciate our choice of being as healthy and environmentally friendly as possible .

The project is destined to expand again: Davide would like to take over other cabins in the heart of the city, to invite more and more English to appreciate the taste and aroma of the real Italian coffee shop.