A world full of coffee shops flooded with milk. Where there are only blonde, medium and dark roasts, the dairy selection boasts cow milk, soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk, oat milk, hemp milk, and coconut milk. Where coffee can be prepared as a pour over, espresso, in the pot, or cold brew, milk comes steamed and frothed, creamy or powdered, condensed in a can (if you’re Vietnamese) or curdled into cheese (if you’re Swedish), and even churned into butter. Our coffee is drowning in dairy.
Drowning indeed, so let the coffee get its revenge. In the great Italian tradition of la vendetta one unsuspecting café offering turns the tables: the affogato. An icon of the gleaming, steam-punk age of espresso behemoths, the name literally translated as ‘drowned.’ This time, the dairy drowns in the coffee.
Simply put, the affogato is a scoop of ice cream, gelado, or fior di latte (a simple cheese made from fresh milk), assaulted by a hot and bitter pour of espresso. Some serve it with a swirl of amaretto while others make it more youthful by subbing the coffee for hot chocolate. More traditionally, a swallow of strong grappa is mixed in as a version of an espresso correto with the addition of ice cream.
The affogato is best served with little ceremony–honoring its two ingredients without distracting from the point–-the contrast within the drink before you. A drinkable pun on the term bittersweet. A dichotomy between hot and cold. The states of matter clashing in liquid and solid. The yin and the yang of vanilla and coffee. A dietician’s qualm between drink and dessert. Your daily cup of coffee is transformed with a scoop of ice cream.
And after the meal, the waiter asks, “Any coffee or dessert?” Someone orders both and the waiter makes a delicious blunder. Espresso drools from some shining stainless steel tower that must have come from Italy during times of historical migration. A plop of ice cream dragged from a display cooler with a belly of curved glass and chrome detailing. In a mug, any old mug, the two duel it out.
The heat of the fresh espresso nearly sublimates the ice cream into an airy, white foam. The cool core of the scoop dissipates the coffee’s scald. Each bitter molecule donning a sweet jacket to insulate itself from the insulting cold. The creamy dairy runs out in miniscule deltas of muddy milk. Black and white, hot and cold, bitter and sweet vying for supremacy as you sip and spoon ambiguous states of matter into your hungry mouth. After a bit, homogeneity. A room temperature beige drink with something reminiscent of the fluff of ice cream and the bite of espresso.
Coffee taken with milk and sugar is not so different from coffee taken with ice cream. The difference is the drama present in the affogato which elevates it from the mundane cup of joe.
Across the country, consumers are opting for non-alcoholic drinks. Wines, beers, and spirits are now manufactured without alcohol. The industry that is pushing for what they call mindful drinking isn’t against alcohol, but they want more options in liquor stores and bars. Still, mindful drinking is an effort to change American drinking sensibilities.
Rather than just getting drunk, many native Mexican peoples liked to cut their booze with other intoxicating substances. Among them, peyote, morning glory seeds, mushrooms, and even a poisonous toad. These additions could influence the fermentation of alcohol, but also heightened the religious experience of drinking.
North Carolina produces more tobacco than any other state. In recent years, the city of Charlotte has begun to consume more too. New cigar bars are opening in Charlotte, fitting in a legal niche unique to North Carolina that allows smoking in bars and serving liquor without food. A new approach to hospitality welcomes patrons to drink, smoke, learn about products, and develop a palate through pairing whiskey with cigars.
Hooch is a name for moonshine. The term comes from hoochenoo, the name of a native Alaskan tribe. The history of Western settlement in Alaska is underlined by a policy of prohibition for native peoples. Thanks to these restrictions, natives learned to smuggle and later distill their own spirits. Hoochenoo was the name of molasses moonshine, and was later adopted by the rest of America as ‘hooch’.
