I bought a Cafe Ristretto the other day as an interim measure in case my beautiful old Novitalia is in fact dead. The coffee itself is OK (I have a reasonable grinder, but the coffee beans are now stale since I have been waiting for Caffe Bianchi to get their shop back open to fix the Nova for some time now). The crema made is substantial, but I figure I'm getting fooled a bit because of the dual pot thingy that comes with it. I know some on this and other forums despise these (being purists that they are) and there definitely is a little bit of 'frothiness' to the crema, but it doesn't taste bad. I'm of the opinion that if it looks and quacks like a duck, then I don't care if it came from an egg or not. There are a lot of good design points to the el cheapo Ristretto for mine - the removable tank without a tube, heat indicator in case you're too hot or cold to pull a shot or steam some milk, nice viewing of the tank level being a few. It is however painfully slow (in my opinion) to steam some milk, and the machine struggles to steam enough milk to 65 degrees C for two flat whites - it gets there, but only after a minute or two warming up, and then another 30 to 60 seconds of steaming. This means that the shot of espresso is now colder than it should be, and so taste is down a bit. This redoubles the importance of having nice hot cups before you start, and if you were just drinking shots, it would be entirely moot. For the price however, how do you complain about this? My plan is to have it (the Sunbeam Ristretto) hanging around after the Nova gets out of hospital, or is reincarnated, and then during high load periods (dinner parties and the like) the two can be going together - I have plenty of kitchen space.
