The language of ordering coffee

Robin's tipping thread got me thinking about ordering coffee in restaurants and coffee shops.
We spend a fair amount of time in New England every year and when there, I have to retrain myself when ordering coffee. I usually drink decaf (I have plenty of energy so don't need to amp up.) and like it with a half of Spenda (Stevia when at home) and about a tablespoon or two of half and half. In my world, a "regular" coffee means caffeinated/black (and then I add my own stuff). In New England, a "regular" means coffee with cream and sugar (lots of both). How far does this reach? Can anyone tell me? New York, Connecticut? And how far west? Pennsylvania maybe?

When it comes to Starbucks the language makes me crazy. I actually get performance anxiety when it's my turn in line. Venti? Grande? Which one is the small one? Skinny? Non-fat? Do those mean the same thing?

[Jenise]

There are even more ways to be complicated at Starbucks if you're a cappucino drinker: I often order an unadvertised size that not all of their stores seem to have, a "short". It's what they would put an espresso in, about six ounces. I do that because they typically flood a tall with way too much milk for the single short of coffee that's in there; so proportionally speaking, a 'wet short cappucino' is the same drink as a half-dry tall for 75 cents less.

A "Regular" around Buffalo is with cream & sugar.

It's easy, anywhere I go I just ask for coffee with chocolate milk; and when they say "say what?" I say just add cream.

Gene makes coffee at home for himself, so the only time we have it out is going to breakfast with friends. Coffee here in the west in coffee. Strong, black, brought straight from the pot. All they ask is if you want decaf instead.
On the table is sugar, raw sugar, and sweeteners in packets. I bring my stevia from home. If you want cream, they bring it from the refrigerator. For my latte, I go to Java Kiosk. I get iced, medium, non-fat, cinnamon sugar white mocha. It is always yummy. In winter, I will change to hot.

As Karen says, out here coffee is coffee. If you want it decaf, you order decaf. If you want cream, you ask for cream and you put it in your coffee. If you want a sweetener, you put it in the coffee.

As for Starbuck's, I tend to keep my orders simple there to avoid feeling like an idiot. It bothers me enough that I have to use the word "grande" to order a "grande iced Americano" (which is about as complicated as I'll get there). OTOH, I don't mind the funky linguistics if I'm ordering a frappucino. Those aren't coffee.

A number of years ago, a Starbuck's opened up in our neighborhood, right around the corner from a coffee place owned by a scrappy local guy. He started putting stickers on his to-go cups with anti-Starbuck's messages on them. One of them was something along the lines of "The Java Lounge won't make you sound like a friggin' moron when you order your coffee".

[Robin Garr]

When I lived in New York City in the early '90s, before the designer coffee fad had gotten that far east, there was a standard vocabulary for ordering deli coffee in those ubiquituous pale blue cardboard cups with the "Greek Key" design around them.

As I recall it, and I may be off here, "Black" in NY talk meant "black." "Reg'lah" meant with a shot of milk, and "Dahk" meant with less milk. I think if you wanted cream or sugar you had to ask for them separately.

Haven't heard it for quite a while, but in cafes and diners on the Eastern Seaboard, people used to order their coffee "white". Which meant cream already added. Never could figure out why anyone would order something pre-mixed when you could just as easily adjust it to your own particular taste.

As a child I liked coffee with sugar in it---I think coffee handles sugar well and they can make for a good combination---but I developed the military approach to coffee: people who drink coffee drink coffee, black, no sugar. People who don't really like coffee all that much drink confectionary drinks that have a little coffee in them.

(Confessing at the same time that I like the occasional latte now, when the coffee isn't submerged by the milk. Never really developed the fondness for mochas, for some reason. And people who order that vanilla-soy-half caf-caramel whip are pretentious yuppies----and you know who you are! )

And people who order that vanilla-soy-half caf-caramel whip are pretentious yuppies----and you know who you are! )

My favorite there is the "non-fat, decaf, white chocolate mocha". Geez, just order warm milk.

One of them was something along the lines of "The Java Lounge won't make you sound like a friggin' moron when you order your coffee".

I love this!

I lived in New England until I was almost old enough to start high school so I had no experience with ordering coffee in a restaurant. The first time back I was in Maine and remember ordering a cup of coffee in a cafe and it came with cream in it. I said to the waitress I didn't order my coffee with cream. She answered me in a very polite tone of voice "you didn't order it without". It's not that way on the left coast.

I grew up drinking coffee with milk and sugar, dropped the milk fourteen years ago, and dropped the sugar close to a year ago. If the coffee order is from a deli, I typically find that unless I order coffee black, it comes with milk. As far as ordering coffee at Starbucks, I refuse to participate in that tall/grande/venti garabage, and I order a small/medium/large cup of coffee. When I am ordering hot coffee at Starbucks, I will pop the lid at the counter - if they left room for milk, I will ask them to top up the cup.

Due to the variation in delivery circumstances (delis will add milk and sugar by request, Starbucks and the like will hand you a cup and tell you the milk and sugar are "over there") I don't think there is a standard language of ordering coffee in NYC.

During my normal life, at home and the office, I make my own coffee. I buy green beans, my neighbor roasts them, and I grind just before brewing. Black of course. So I don't know about the language (regular, white, dark).

BUT when we travel in Europe (the coffee is so great in France!) we have a continuing problem. At the end of the meal, there is often a dessert, and if the dessert is chocolate, we really want the coffee WITH the dessert. This seems to be unheard of over there, and we have often been aware of waitresses watching us to see when we eat the very last forkful of mousse or cake and THEN the coffee arrives. Of course we don't have coffee and dessert often enough to be able to remember to explain in advance that we are crazy Americans and we would like to sip our coffee WHILE eating the chocolate cake. And after the desserts arrive, the waiter/waitress tends to be oblivious to arm waving and attempts at eye-catching. I am sure there is some way to make that happen...

I lived in New England until I was almost old enough to start high school so I had no experience with ordering coffee in a restaurant. The first time back I was in Maine and remember ordering a cup of coffee in a cafe and it came with cream in it. I said to the waitress I didn't order my coffee with cream. She answered me in a very polite tone of voice "you didn't order it without". It's not that way on the left coast.

Yeah, my first month in NYC I stopped in a diner for a cup of coffee and the counterman asked "regular?" which to me meant non-decaf. I then had to reorient my vocabulary there, always ordering "black" to avoid coffee sullied by the addition of dairy products.

Mark Lipton

During my normal life, at home and the office, I make my own coffee. I buy green beans, my neighbor roasts them, and I grind just before brewing. Black of course. So I don't know about the language (regular, white, dark).

BUT when we travel in Europe (the coffee is so great in France!) we have a continuing problem. At the end of the meal, there is often a dessert, and if the dessert is chocolate, we really want the coffee WITH the dessert. This seems to be unheard of over there, and we have often been aware of waitresses watching us to see when we eat the very last forkful of mousse or cake and THEN the coffee arrives. Of course we don't have coffee and dessert often enough to be able to remember to explain in advance that we are crazy Americans and we would like to sip our coffee WHILE eating the chocolate cake. And after the desserts arrive, the waiter/waitress tends to be oblivious to arm waving and attempts at eye-catching. I am sure there is some way to make that happen...

Language difficulties and customs can be challenging, for sure. Once in Friuli we stopped for coffee to wait out a rainstorm. We had ordered cappucini all around, then one of our group noticed the gelato menu and decided she also wanted a coconut gelato. Since I'm a sucker for coco myself, I called back the young waiter and tried to explain the lady and I also wanted coco gelato.

In due time our orders arrived: two cappuccino "regular" and two cappuccini with a glistening blob of coco gelato floating on top of each!

Wasn't bad, actually.

If you think the US regional coffee variants are confusing, try being an American ordering coffee in Australia. Not only is the terminology completely different, so is the coffee-making itself. Some variant on drip brewing is the norm across the USA, but in Australia everything seems to be some variant on what in the US would be called espresso.

-Paul W.

Now THAT reminds me of a story. It goes back 20 years or so and it's a bit hazy but I think it was on a trip to Germany, where I met an online friend and we went out. He had a trick he would pull on visiting Americans. He would talk one into ordering "Ice Tea" and the waiter would be baffled. Then he would helpfully explain to the waiter "you know what EIS is, right, and you know TEE, so just bring both together." Alles auf deutsch.

Invariably there would be a cup of hot tea with a scoop of ice cream floating in it...

It gets even more complicated in France, where a cafe au lait (and cappucino, for that matter) is served only in the morning and the waiters look at North Americans who order it after dinner in a rather deprecating way.

My fave in France is either an espresso, or what is called a cafe noisette, which has absolutely nothing to do with nuts, it's just an espresso with a dash of cream. I usually just order espresso and add my own dash as theirs can vary in volume.

My normal postprandial shot here is a double espresso, but if you ask for that in France you get soemthing that really puts hair on your chest, unless they take pity on a poor unsuspecting tourist.

One thing I've noted online before is what to me appears to be the shifting meaning of "café noir" in France. Back in the '60s, I learned that one had to order coffee that way in the morning to avoid the otherwise obligatory café au lait, but what arrived was a cup of drip coffee unadulterated. Fast forward to the '90s and an order of "café noir" at breakfast time in France now regularly produces a cup of espresso. Cultural shift? or do I now just frequent more upscale establishments?

Other previously related coffee incident: in 1969, my parents and I spent the summer traveling around Mexico. My father drank black coffee with sugar added, and in Chihuahua drew a panicked reaction from the waiter when the pot of coffee (made in anticipation of a standard Mexican cafe con leche) arrived and my father picked up the cup of black coffee and prepared to drink it without milk. "¡Muy peligroso, Señor! No es café Americano." It took several minutes of strained communication to assure the horrified waiter that my father knew what he was doing. Little did he realize that my father was a regular patron of Mr. Alfred Peet, the godfather of the Coffee Renaissance in this country.

Mark Lipton

On my first trip to France, the hotel we stayed at served us the morning coffee in a large pitcher, with a separate pitcher of scalded milk, so that we could mix our cafe au lait as we liked it. I don't care much for scalded milk so I had my "cafe au lait" black, without the lait. Big mistake. Between the unadulterated French coffee and a morning of barrel tasting of pre-malo wines at local domaines, by noontime I was in agony with the worst case of heartburn you can imagine.

Since then, I've always had the cafe au lait with the lait.

As Frank Zappa said in his song "In France": "They got some coffee, eatin' right through the cup."

-Paul W.

Here in the "big mitten", it's been my experience that it has more to do with the place you're at than the region at large. But that might just be my interpretation of it from my own ordering experiences. For example, if I order a "regular" Iced Coffee at McDonalds, it will come with cream and sugar by default (99 times out of 100). Having to specify cream or sugar is essentially taken out of your hands. So if you only like cream and sugar (which I essentially do), all one needs to say is "Iced Coffee" and there it is!

On the other hand, saying "regular coffee" in a restaurant is likely to get you a purely black cup since cream and sugar is already there (typically). Or you may just get asked if you prefer anything in it.

I'm not sure what using the phrase "regular coffee" might get me at a Starbucks or an actual coffee bar as I usually just order an espresso based mocha (if hot) or just an iced coffee. So the cream and sugar is typically part of those choices by default.

I'm not a fan of flavorings in coffee, for some reason. I like the fresh-roasted taste to shine through. For me, chocolate is the only ideal partner for highlighting that distinct coffee taste (if modest). Probably because they share so much in common. I enjoy espresso-based mochas (if they are from a true coffee bar or a Starbucks etc).

Better yet, one of my all-time favorite seductions is snacking on dark chocolate squares with coffee (typically iced). The way the chocolate amplifies the roasted qualities when you wash down the thick and silky chocolate is just pure bliss. I adore that combination. I think I joked once before how I've never understood the appeal of wine with chocolate yet coffee and chocolate seem like perfect partners to me inherently. I think it's the mingling of all those dark and bitter components colliding together and hitting the senses. And of course the texture of the chocolate when chewed. Oh my...I just love it!

Jeff

The first time I was in France, I remember trying to get "coffee with cream" at a place we were staying. The waiter appeared not to understand me and to be more than a little annoyed with the request. What I ended up with was black coffee and a side of some dairy fat product that was much closer to butter than to cream (it looked like unsweetened clotted cream). It didn't work so well in the coffee. Shortly after that, I figured out that what I wanted was "cafe au lait".

Last month I was in Bordeaux where coffee is a tiny cup with no more than two mouthfuls in it.... If you want another one you have to pay again. (ask for a large coffee and you get the same measure in a larger cup).

Back home you get a larger cup and you pay for each one.

Now I'm here in British Columbia and coffee comes in a mug which they keep filling up without additional charge.

Wonderful, I am in coffee heaven

[Jenise]

So how long will you be in British Columbia, Peter, and exactly whereabouts are ye?

Another coffee story, and I apologize if I've told this one before: Bob and I took my father and his wife out for dinner one night, a very upscale Italian place in Beverly Hills. Now you need to understand that Dad and Betty were, in their day, habitues of the type of 'Continental' restaurant that typically had a good bar with live music to which all would repair after dinner for an after-dinner drink, or three, like Irish Coffee. So here we were at this tony restaurant and dinner was over, and the waiter asked if any of us would like coffee. Now I reasonably certain neither Dad or Betty had ever had a fresh-pulled espresso style coffee drink before, it was still rare then, so to simplify matters I ordered cappucinos all around. When they showed up, Betty took a sip of hers and made a face: "They forgot the booze!" she roared. Apparently, there was a hot coffee bar drink by the same name.