My local Kroger’s supermarket stocks cans of Cafe du Monde chicory coffee. The smaller and more expensive Italian grocery store down the street has two or three chicory coffee brands (it’s pretentious, I suppose).
I drink it black, too.
Well, I know I don’t. My husband favors Starbucks coffee, which he orders straight and drinks with a tiny amount of cream. I can’t drink Starbucks coffee because it’s too strong and bitter. I like my coffee pretty light, even with regular home- or restaurant-brewed stuff, so if I added enough cream to Starbucks coffee to make it drinkable, it would be cold. So I order a latte, which is light enough to suit me, but still hot because the milk was steamed. I don’t care about the foam one way or the other.
I’d never heard of this misto/ cafe au lait thing (hot milk and drip coffee, apparently) before this thread, but I may try it next time we go to Starbucks – maybe I’ll like it better than a latte. I don’t believe that learning these distinctions, and developing a preference for one over the other will make me pretentious, though.
I actually went and tried it after the Starbucks Gossip flak (Jess, are you the same Jess on IndieBride??) with their vanilla soymilk and I thought it was really pretty decent.
You might try ordering a flat white, if only to see if they know what it is (and maybe if they’ll knock a couple cents off the price, which I doubt, but it’s worth a shot, right?)
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’ve never been anywhere else with coffee as good; even speciality coffee houses serve inferior coffee. It’s not the most delicious foodstuff ever created, but it’s the best coffee money can buy from a restaurant. So by the standards of restaurant coffee, it’s “superlative” in the sense that it’s better than anyone else’s.
Nope. I’ve been on a couple of wedding/ etiquette boards, but not that one (although I have lurked there). This is the only board I ever use ‘Jess’ at, though. In fact, if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t be ‘Jess’ here – too hard to vanity search! If you ever see ‘TamJamB’ anywhere, that’s probably me.
fetus – I’ll ask for a flat white next time I get a latte, just to see if the baristas at my Starbucks know what it is. If they don’t, I can just translate as “a latte, hold the foam,” right?
One more thing – the tea-lattes? Are they all made with concentrate? Because I love tea, but don’t like the tea lattes I’ve had at coffee houses (Starbucks or any other I’ve tried). They all taste ‘instant’ to me. I’ve made a version at home that I like (1/3 very, very strongly steeped tea, mixed with 2/3 hot milk), that I like, but without the foam, obviously.
It’s all what you grow up with, I guess.
My dad, at whose house I often breakfast, always thinks of coffee as something that smells nice but doesn’t have much taste other than Hot. This is the light-roasted, parsimonious pisswater farmers drank cup after cup of at the local café way back when; flavor was added primarily by letting it cook on the burner for hours.
I, OTOH, thought of coffee as donut lubricant until I got to college and fell into the habit of doing the crossword puzzle at a local espresso stand. After that I wanted a coffee with kick, body, and aroma that translated to taste. That meant dark-roasted.
Coffee as I make it angries up his stomach; coffee as he makes it just turns mine.
I drink lattes because I can’t get a buzz on standard coffee. For me, standard coffee is only good for counteracting the downer side effect from the prescription muscle relaxant that I take when my back goes out.
Be sure to be elitist and snobbish when you do it, and say, “My favorite barista knows what it is.” 
They are at Starbucks and any chain that Starbucks owns, and anywhere else I would assume they are unless told otherwise. Half tea concentrate, half milk, and then the whole concoction is steamed and foamed. The concentrate comes in a box from Tazo, the company that makes Starbucks’ (and seemingly every other coffeehouse these days) loose-leaf and bagged tea. I think they’re OK, and some of the people at my work like them. But I’ll try your idea at home.
BTW, it’s not “obvious” that there’s no foam–there are home espresso makers with steam wands attached so you can steam (and of course foam) your milk. It’s nothing like the steamers on professional machines–I can’t make a good cappucino on the one I have at home, just because it’s such a low-quality steamer–but it’s a little closer to what you’d get in a coffeehouse. I use a Krups one, and I like it OK. The only thing is it pulls a lot of espresso at once (2 cups or more), and you gotta be prepared to down it or mix it with something fast because espresso tastes terrible if you let it sit around for more than 10 seconds. No problem for me–I’m happy taking in all that caffeine. But it can be a problem for some people. Then again, there might be a home machine that pulls a shot at a time.
If you’d rather not have the milk, ask for a hammerhead: coffee with two (or more, generally depending on size) shots of espresso. You’ll have a cup of coffee plus all the caffeine you normally get in a latte. This accounts for a good 75% of my caffeine intake, even at home.