Coffee, Anyone?

What’s on my mind? Something called a “cortado.” God only knows what it is. 

To me, “cortado” sounds like a bullfight. I don’t know about you, but I’d be worried about bullspit. 

Ask Google what a cortado is and Google cutely answers: ¿Cuál es el café cortado?

I feel like I’m channeling Desi Arnaz in an I Love Lucy rerun.

Google then responds with “People also ask …”

• What size is a cortado? 

• What is a Costa cortado? 

• What is the difference between a cortado and a macchiato? 

True confession: For most of my adult life, I assumed “macchiato” was a type of S+M involving fur handcuffs.

What I want to know is who these anonymous “people” are, asking all those questions. They surely know a whole lot more than I do, since they know enough to ask. If they don’t know, they probably don’t need to know - unless they’re baristas and their livelihood depends on it, because (ta-dah!) a “cortado” is a cup of coffee. 

I can say that with confidence because I spent hours of research (5 min. on Wikipedia) finding out. Can you believe “cortado” has an entire page in Wikipedia?  TMI, folks … TMI.

I had another clue when a writer friend young enough to be a fetus tweeted: “On days like today, when I’m working from home and my coffee cupboard is empty, I wish I had an assistant to bring me a flat white.”

To which I innocently tweeted back: “I make lattes. But not flat whites.” 

He: “Flat whites are pretty common these days. I find they have the best proportion of cream to espresso. Lattes are a touch too milky for me, but cortados aren’t quite creamy enough ... I also love a good cappuccino. Now I want coffee.”

This made me nervous. The only reason I can make lattes is because I have a fancy-schmancy machine that knows how to read a bar code to do it. My machine does not make cortados. My machine does not even know how to spell cortados. 

Cortados are obviously w-a-a-y higher in status than plebeian lattes and cappuccinos, which are so “yesterday.” 

Cortados are probably trendy. Himself and I are not trendy. Give us Folgers instant crystals and some boiling water and we’ll be perfectly fine.

I wouldn’t mind ordering a cortado, if only to see the terror in a barista’s eyes. I pity baristas. Being one must be like staying up all night studying for the final exam, only to learn there are questions on it no one thought to teach.

Another Twitteree (who bills himself as a former stand-up comic and a former Supreme Court clerk) seems to write about nothing but coffee. 

Example: “They tell me it’s Monday morning again, but with the help of #coffee, I’ll still be a force to be reckoned with.” 

Another example: “Everyone has to believe in something. This morning, I believe I’ll have #coffee.” 

#coffee is an actual hashtag - mostly coffee adverts and promos, but also some sleep-deprived fanatics. 

If I’d had to guess, I would have defined “cortado” as an opera singer. Or a maybe a Mexican dish served with salsa. 

The former Supreme Court clerk/comic has 116,000 Twitter followers. My cordato-drinking pal has 635. I’m betting every one of their friends knows what a cortado is.

I have 31 Twitter followers. This explains a lot.

© Nicole Parton, 2019