VillaWare V41006 Espresso Machine

Okay, to be completely honest I am a huge espresso, cappuccino, latte, tea drinker. I spend an average of $20 daily at Starbucks. My francisfrancis! X1 broke a couple of months ago and I was looking for something almost equal to replace it. I used to live in Europe and grew up on good coffee, espresso and cappuccino.

So I decided to give home espresso brewing another try with a pump driven machine. After many days of research I settled on the Villaware Moderno. I ordered this machine just because I used to own a pasta maker by Villaware. It was outstanding. Therefore I wanted to give this one a try. I received my box earlier this evening and prepared my first shot and it was excellent! The crema on the top was smooth enough to retain the sugar inside slowly..... Its heavy and solid and produces great foam. (15 bar)

All in all I a very happy with my purchase. The machine heats up fast, its easy to use and the foamer is fool proof. I steamed half and half for my cappucino and got mountains of very stable foam on the first try! For espresso I used the Illy pods that came with it and got very satisfactory results. The espresso was plenty hot and had a moderate amount of crema. But I understand that you get less crema anyway if you use pods. The hot water dispensing feature also works fine. I dispense the hot water into a large pyrex measuring cup for preheating the espresso cups.

It looks like my francis machine, but hopefully it will last longer than it did. This is a great deal, you will not regret buying this machine.