Cafe Crema: Cannoli with a side of bravado

You can get cannoli and coffee all over, but none come with the floor show that René Kobeitri provides at the new Cafe Crema, just up Ninth Street from Geno's in South Philly. It was, briefly, a yogurt shop and a hot dog shop.

René, the quirky Frenchman who also owns Rim Cafe across the way, bounces between the cannoli case and the coffee station in the window, with a tabletop roaster alongside all manner of French presses, siphons, and pour-over devices.

Ask him about the house coffee. Or don't ask him about the house coffee. He'll tell you anyway. It's Yirgacheffe. Ethiopian. He says he roasts it hourly.

Want a cafe au lait? "I'll show you," he insisted one afternoon this week.

He goes behind the counter to scald milk and pour it into a French press. Then he scoops out ground coffee beans and pours them into the press.

After a few minutes, the coffee on top has turned brown, while the milk on the bottom is tan. He presses it, and with a "voila!" pours the drink into tiny cups to sample out to a half-dozen people eating cannoli in the dining room.

Since it was made with no water, it's simply coffee-infused milk. Utterly smooth. Not even a hint of bitterness.

"Is this whole milk or skim?" a customer who found herself in the line of conversation asks. (The customers are a mix of locals and Pat's/Geno's-sandwich-toting tourists making room for dessert.)

René snorts. It's as if she had asked for a Tab float at a soda fountain.

He makes his own chocolate in assorted flavors - milk, dark, dark with cinnamon and jalapeno, peppermint, parmesan (yes), and white. The hot chocolate is not made from a mix. Select your chocolate pieces from a case, and the barista drops them into a cup of hot milk and stirs.

The shop's specialty is the cannoli, the cheese-filled pastry shell. They sell for $5 for plain and $6 for flavors.

The shells have a crunch, but none of that deep-fried unctuousness. They're brought in from D'Agostino in Palermo. "Sicilians are the only ones who can make them like this," he insisted.

Staff dips the edges in various flavors - chocolate, peanut butter, white chocolate - and sometimes dusts them with pistachio.

The fillings are creamy, not dense. Old family recipe? Rene tossed his head. "I don't want to be hard on the others," he said, looking around furtively as if a baker from another cannoli shop was lurking nearby, preparing to whack him on the head with a rolling pin.

"I don't believe in old recipes," he said. "We have to do it better."

Crema's cannoli fillings are made of heavy cream, the higher-end ricotta impastata, and mascarpone. The signature is a drizzle of house-made salted caramel over the top to provide just enough sweet-and-salty bite.

Cafe Crema, 1205 S. Ninth St.