Cortado

I love coffee. I’m not addicted and usually have my first coffee of the day some time in the afternoon and I don’t usually have more than two a day. Some days I have none and that’s fine. But I really love the taste of a good coffee and in Barcelona I learned that my favorite way of drinking coffee is what the Spanish call a cortado (tallat in Catalan). It’s usually served in a small glass and in Spain at least half, if not two-thirds, of the glass is filled with espresso and then topped with steamed milk. I like it better this way because the coffee taste is not drowned out by too much milk as in the lattes and capuccinos commonly available in North America. In France I learned that the closest thing to a cortado is a petit crème. Here in Toronto it’s always a bit tricky. Technically, the closest thing is a macchiato, which is an espresso topped with some milk froth. So I usually order a macchiato and ask them to add steamed milk rather than just froth. Call it a wet macchiato. We used to have a perfect cortado every saturday at Ozzie’s but unfortunately he stopped serving them in the little glasses since they broke so easily. Now we have our cortados in half-filled capuccino cups, which is not quite the same.

But lately I’ve noticed that some of the baristas in Toronto know exactly what a cortado is and I can even order it that way – simply asking for a cortado and not explaining how to alter a macchiato. So far I’ve had great cortados at the Dark Horse, La Merceria, and Sam James Coffee Bar. The latest one – the one on the photo above – was from Manic Coffee. It certainly brought me back to Barcelona.