If you want to make sure you are not served a glass of cold milk, these are a couple of words you can add to your basic order of un latte:
- caldo: steams the milk so it is hot and frothy
- macchiato: steams the milk and adds a shot of espresso
- caffelatte: warms up the milk, so it is hot but not frothy, and adds coffee. This is what I had for breakfast as a child. I would never order it in a coffee shop.
Click on the Play button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:
It’s funny, but I would also find it embarrassing to order a caffelatte in a Italian coffee shop. I wonder why it’s that… I *still* have it every day for breakfast at home!
I am not sure I have the answer, but I have some ideas: you go to the coffee shop to get something different from what you usually get at home, so you get a cappuccino; you can drink a cappuccino by itself, but a caffelatte really needs something (biscotti, pane e marmellata, fette biscottate); caffelatte ties us to our childhood and it’s a private relationship. I think that a mix of these facts are at play here.