It’s cultural appropriation, yes. And to hear a lot of people talk you’d think cultural appropriation was a bad thing at all times but that isn’t case. Hell, I can’t think of a single culture that didn’t appropriate something from another culture at some point. Appropriation can be good, it can be bad, and at times it can just be humorous.
I thought the main point of an Americano was that it **does not ** have steamed milk, but just plain milk or half & half or whatever? The main reason I don’t much like espresso drinks is because I don’t like the taste of steamed milk.
By the way, everything in this thread rocks! The best thing I can contribute is my recent visit to a fairly new local pizzeria, which had awesome upscale decor and was clearly going for the artisanal-pizza set.
There was a punk Asian waitress with bleached-blonde hair and a very warm manner; and a classically Japanese-looking well-muscled guy behind the counter who was throwing the dough in the air and spinning it, just like you see on TV. First time I’ve ever seen that in person.
It might have plain milk or half-and-half , but just like brewed coffee an Americano can be drunk black. The main point is the dilution of the espresso, which is supposedly to give it a similar taste to brewed coffee.
No, the main point of an Americano is that it’s the strength that didn’t cause Americans to go into spasms (unlike our regular cofee); it’s watered down to the point of being similar to what you get from a cafetera americana (a drip coffeemaker). If the drinker wants to add sugar or milk (no creamer available in Spain) to coffee of any strength, of course they can, it’s legal.
Café solo is a normal-strength black coffee; lit. “coffee by itself”. Half-strength is largo, quarter americano, eighth americano largo.
I teached my girlfriend some Spanish, she always remembers how to say “I am hungry” as “Yo quiero hombre”, instead of “Yo tengo hambre”. :eek:
For non Spanish speakers, instead of saying “I am hungry” she says “I want a man”.
Saw something similar on a self-serve coffee machine at a hotel restaurant in Japan. Press a button and it grinds beans a brews you a cup. There were several buttons providing options for lattes and other fancy features. But of the two basic coffee buttons, one said “blend,” which is standard Japanese-strength coffee, and another said “American (weak)”. Not sure what the machine did with that. Fewer beans? Push the water through faster? Never tried it; I was just amused that they came right out and described it as “weak”.
This brought back a weird memory from college. A local record shop closing down sale: I found an album called Big Balls and the Great White Idiot by, um, Big Balls and the Great White Idiot. German punk. Of course I bought it, obviously. It’s every bit as bad as you would imagine - just so earnest, so desperately keen to be one of the boys. Boasting about how they get drunk and have anarchic nights out eating burgers - oh, and a cover of Anarchy (“Anarchy in Germany”, natch); and White Light/White Heat.
Haven’t thought about this in decades. Being to lazy to go dig out the album, I googled them - and, dear god, they have a Wikipedia page. And you can find the complete album on Youtube, (which I won’t link to because that sounds like an iffy copyright issue).
Any German dopers remember them? Fondly?
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A traditional americano is a shot (or shots) of espresso cut with hot water. No steamed milk or cream or anything like that. The story goes that american soldiers stationed in Italy during WWII would dilute the standard italian espresso to make something more akin to drip coffee.
Given that every coffeeshop I’ve ever seen also serves drip coffee, I’m not sure why one would order an americano, but there you have it.
Where I’ve seen an americano on the menu (the Caribbean) there were no drip coffee makers.
This Americano doesn’t like espresso because it tastes like charcoal. The beans have the appearance and texture of charcoal; they have been roasted so long the flavor and caffeine have gone up in smoke. Give me a good medium roast, brewed strong, with cream, please.
I guess if you have never had espresso made with good beans, roasted correctly (i.e. if you have only had Starbucks) then this might be correct. In Italy I found that espresso was different in every different coffee shop or restaurant. Sometimes fruity, sometimes very smoky, sometimes almost sweet. Depended on where they got their beans. I wish we could get such variety in coffee shops here in the US.
Starbuck’s drip coffee is burnt, too. Don’t like dark roast.
Had some delicious Turkish coffee served by an Assyrian coworker. Dude looked like an anti-government guerilla who got out one step ahead of Saddam’s goons, but he brewed a good, thick, almost sweet cuppa joe.
In my experience, if the shop/stand serves espresso, their drip coffee has turned into sludge from sitting in the carafe for hours. Whereas the Americano is made fresh every time. That’s why I switched from drip coffee to Americano, in the rare occasion I need a caffeine fix while on the go.
My vague recollection is that you get a larger portion for the American option. So they must use the same amount of ground beans and pour more hot water through it.
Since we’re on the topic, let me add: Cafe au lait, which is 1/2 scalded milk and 1/2 coffee. I suppose it’s better if the coffee has chicory in it, which is how they serve it at the Cafe du Monde.
As for humorous cultural appropriation, it’s my honor to introduce to this thread: http://www.engrish.com/ (Just look up Engrish if the link doesn’t work.)
I think this was once part of the “Cheezburger” series of blogs featuring humorous daily or hourly posts, but at some point moved out and became its own thing. Maybe people were getting triggered, you know, they thought this site was making fun of well meaning but inadvertently hilarious attempts at English, found all over Asia. Well, the site does do that.
But if you’ve ever lived or traveled in Asia, you’ll be constantly bombarded with this stuff, ad nauseam, to the point where you’ve got nowhere to go but to laugh. Some of these examples are so over the top…
I just returned from a trip to Italy ( Sicily ) and while everyone there was great, I felt that by asking for caffe Americano was analogous to going to a pub in Ireland and asking for a pint of ( bitter, stout…whatever ) with ice cubes in it, to both cool and dilute it. No “attitude” detected ( that I could sense ) but I always wondered if they thought I was some kind of wuss that couldn’t handle “a real coffee”.
That said, I did drink and enjoy cups of espresso, but not as a breakfast drink. When I drink coffee with some breakfast ( there or back home ) I like a proper sized cup I can sip at and drink over a few minutes, not just a small “shot” I can down in one small gulp. I kinda’ like large amounts of hot liquid in me to make my body “work”, shall we say.
You can have my Americano when you pry it from my cold dead hands! The problem with an espresso is that there isn’t very much of it and it is so concentrated that it needs sugar to take the edge of. I’d like a larger serving of my hot beverage, and I can’t stand sweet drinks. The Americano solves both these problems by diluting the espresso - it’s more to drink, and no longer requires sugar.
When I lived in Egypt, there were all kinds of appropriated names/foods. In every grocery store there were several brands of “Oreos” with bizarre variations on the name, like “Borios.” And let us not forget the great pizza chain restaurant, “Pizza Hat,” which stole the actual Pizza Hut logo. The great thing about that is, when you see the words “Pizza Hat” with the Pizza Hut logo, the logo definitely looks like a hat.
I love this.
It also makes just as much, perhaps even more sense as a name than “Pizza Hut”, too, unless the restaurants I’ve seen are actually made of boughs, straw, and mud.