Like two hands examining a well-worn shirt at Porta Portese (speaking of vintage), like a careful glance at a book with a weathered cover along the Seine, like a smile over a cerveza in El Born—perhaps this is what Vesper reminds us of. Certain places are like certain books or old shirts: they hold the stories of everyone who touched them before you.
“I felt responsible for the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, full of light, water, trees, and human beings whose happiness was an integral part of the landscape.” Marguerite Yourcenar
LIVING CONNECTIONS
We are used to stable, long-lasting relationships; we are used to a deep and sincere love; we are used to giving all our attention and priority to this relationship of ours. Too bad this love is an iPhone (yes, there are millions of other models out there), and too bad our fucking relationship is based on hours and hours spent nosing around the virtual world of Instagram (go check your weekly screen time report, we challenge you, and then come back to us). And so, we feel completely thrown off by this place that wants to change the rules of the game—or maybe just wants to return to normalcy, to when our evenings were spent in a neighborhood square or, for the lucky ones, on a promenade by the sea with friends (the real ones, the ones who had a scent). Vesper seems to scream this world out loud; it seems made of people who are worlds apart yet entirely bound by a common factor: the desire to go back to living reality.
“Our goal was to make Vesper a neighborhood spot, a place where people could feel at home and have a good time.”
WE STILL LONG FOR OUR ROOTS
In a historical moment where going to a restaurant or a bar requires the culinary background of a Michelin-starred chef, an intrinsic ability to know every single fucking ingredient behind every drink (and let’s reveal a truth here: most of us choose a classic because we don't understand those damn, overly complicated recipes), we love walking into a place and getting that feeling of home. That feeling of the familiar, yet with an air of refinement (because refinement exists above all in simplicity).
“You walk into Vesper and feel like you're in a French bistro or a Spanish tapas bar, but you take home the Italian spirit. We do it through the food, but we also do it with our wine list... We want to evoke our homeland.”
AMONG THE MONUMENTS OF ROME
You can see the spirit of this place in the initiatives it throws and in its total lack of interest in climbing the rankings that so many others care about (and this isn't a crusade against those venues, just an awakening that maybe, every now and then, we just need a good glass of wine and a cheese platter). Those connections that spark after a 10k morning run with the “Vesper Running Club” (though allow us to say that this is a little crazy—but then again, maybe we’d run among the monuments of Rome too) only to head back inside all together for lunch.
“We do it through activities because we want to build connections—unfortunately, people just don't talk anymore. Nearly twice a month, we organize a 10k run that starts right here at Vesper: there are two teams, one that runs and one that walks, and then everyone comes back to Vesper to have lunch together. Connections are born from these moments; people experience each other outside the digital world too. And then we thought of something different: Vesper is open all day, it gets this incredible light during the daytime, and it’s during the day that you truly experience the venue’s past soul. So, we decided to organize the Sunday 'Dopo Mercato' (After-Market), serving traditional home cooking—the kind you used to eat on Sundays at your grandmother's. We want people to experience that feeling.”
FOUR MINDS
Four minds, four partners, four completely different personalities who don't always agree, but who draw from this very diversity the strength to carry forward a project that is now 12 years old. A project that lived through times like COVID (and we all know how much that period shattered lives), but perhaps gained from that very chapter the awareness to push forward this vision of real life and everyday routine. Because what we are all searching for is that fucking feeling of well-being and serenity—and one evening, sitting at a table in this place, amidst the lights that only Rome can offer, we truly felt it.
Because in the end, as Charles Bukowski wrote, “what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” The four of them keep doing it every single day, and we are left with the warmth of this evening.
