Some British cafes serve drinks with 25 teaspoons of sugar per cup.
Not in Italy.
In Italy coffee is synonymous with espresso. Ask for a coffee in a bar from Trieste to Palermo and you will be presented with an espresso. You may drink it seated (usually more expensive), or standing, al banco.
Sugar is optional. Zero to one teaspoon rather than 25.
But there are of course variations to the single shot.
Some will add a spoonful of milk foam: the macchiato. It should not be confused with the similarly named bucket of milk and caramel available in other countries.
Others will take their coffee long, adding warm water to the espresso, the Americano.
For the morning hours there is the option of a cappuccino (an espresso with steamed milk poured in – as a first step – and then topped with foam). It is important to note, however, that the cappuccino is a breakfast food. Such an arrangement becomes unacceptable – sinful almost – after noon.
The Frappuccino does not exist as an option. Never.
In the south of Italy, during the warmer months, an ice cube may be added to an espresso. Or more precisely, an espresso can be poured over an ice cube but it is never blended with peppermint and cookies.
Syrup is something you take when you have a cold. It is never added to coffee.
However, in the north of Italy, coffee is sometimes “corrected” with liquor, il caffé corretto.
The preferred choice is usually grappa but it varies between regions. Other popular options include sambuca, brandy or cognac. Some are known to even correct with limoncello or wine. While at football stadiums, the espresso shot is corrected with a liquor called Borghetti (empty bottles of which were thrown at referees back in the day).
Italians aren’t the only Europeans to tweak their coffee with liquor. Probably the most renowned such beverage is Irish coffee, a mix of whiskey and coffee topped with cream - although some may argue it ruins all three.
The closest Italians come to ruining coffee and making it excessively rich in sugar is with chocolate (or even Nutella in some households).
But these are all usually branded as pudding, consumed at the end of a healthy Mediterranean meal not something to grab on the way to work.
One is the marocchino, which originated in Piedmont, and consists of a shot of espresso blended with cocoa and milk froth. Other more “imaginative” coffee drinking habits include the use of flavoured or whipped cream (originally an Austrian idea), pouring an espresso over ice cream – the affogato – or mixed into zabaione.
But if you see someone in Italy topping anything involving milk froth with chocolate powder they are probably tourists.
These are the basics. There are then several subcategories.
They primarily revolve around personal taste such as coffee to milk ratios, the optimal milk temperature – cold, warm, hot or tepid – and the choice of whether to consume an espresso in porcelain or glass (al vetro).
And of course, some like their coffee decaf, il deka.
This is coffee. Everything else is pretty much a soft drink.
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