International Coffee

French coffee is not a single drink. It is a family — at least seven distinct drinks built around the small espresso shot, hot milk, and a long café tradition that reaches back to the 1686 opening of Café de Procope in Paris, the first true coffeehouse in Europe. Each member of the family has its own ratio, its own time of day, and its own place in the bistro routine: the café (a straight espresso, what you order if you say ‘un café’ without elaborating), the café crème (the morning espresso-and-milk drink), the café au lait (the home-bowl drip-and-milk drink), the café noisette (the French macchiato), the café allongé (the French lungo or americano), the café gourmand (the espresso served with mini desserts, a 1990s invention), and café filtre (drip-filter coffee, historically uncommon, now reviving). ...

Turkish coffee is the oldest small-cup coffee tradition in the world. It is the original espresso-style drink — small, intense, sweetened to taste, finished in 10-15 minutes — and it predates Italian espresso by roughly 350 years. The basic technique is the same one developed in Istanbul kitchens in the late 1500s: very finely ground coffee, cold water, optional sugar, all simmered together in a small long-handled copper pot called a cezve, then poured (grounds and all) into a small demitasse cup. The grounds settle to the bottom; a thick tan foam called kaymak crowns the top. ...

The Greek frappé is one of the strangest and most beloved coffee drinks in the world. It’s made with instant coffee — yes, instant coffee — and yet it is the unofficial national drink of Greece, sipped from tall glasses at cafés across the country every single day from morning until evening. If your only experience with instant coffee is a sad mug of brown water at a hotel breakfast bar, a properly made frappé will surprise you. It has thick, café-quality foam, a clean and slightly bitter coffee flavor, and the most refreshing iced-coffee texture of any drink we know. It also takes about 90 seconds to make. ...

Thai iced coffee — called oliang (โอเลี้ยง) or gafeh yen in Thailand — is one of the most distinctive iced coffee drinks in the world. It’s intensely strong, deeply sweet, warmly spiced with cardamom, and completely different from the iced coffee you’d make at home by pouring cold brew over ice. This guide covers the authentic Thai method using a traditional Thai coffee blend, plus an easy home espresso version that captures the same flavor profile without sourcing specialty ingredients. ...