Café con Leche

Café con leche (“coffee with milk”) is Spain’s standard milky coffee: a strong espresso mixed with hot milk in roughly equal amounts. It is served in a cup or, in many traditional bars, a small handle-less glass (vaso). The milk is heated with the steam wand but not built into a foamy cap, so the result is smooth and milky rather than frothy, somewhere between a cortado and a latte.

In Spain it’s mainly a morning drink: a quick one at home, then another at the bar mid-morning with breakfast or a snack. Waiters may ask whether you want the milk hot, cold or warm (caliente, fría or templada), and sugar comes in packets on the side. The coffee in traditional bars is often torrefacto, roasted with sugar, which gives it a darker, more bitter edge that the milk softens.

The drink travelled across the Spanish-speaking world. In Cuba, Puerto Rico and Cuban Miami, café con leche is usually made with sweetened espresso and is a breakfast essential, often with buttered toast for dipping.

Coffee with milk is an old European habit, and café con leche came to Spain’s bars from there; its exact origin is unclear. Today it is the most common way Spaniards drink coffee in the morning.

The coffee itself was shaped by history. Torrefacto roasting, in which sugar is caramelised onto the beans, became widespread around the time of the Spanish Civil War, when coffee was scarce, and many traditional bars still use it – one reason milk is so popular in Spanish coffee.

The drink spread with the Spanish language to Latin America and the Caribbean. In Cuba and Puerto Rico it is typically made with sweetened coffee, and in South Florida Cuban cafés sell it from walk-up windows known as ventanitas.