How to make freddo espresso, and how it’s different from ‘Greek coffee’ and frappé.

Different types of ‘Greek coffee’: What is Greek Coffee?

Greeks are obsessed with coffee. The original ᾽Greek coffee᾽, though, is quite different to freddo espresso. It’s drunk in Greece, Anatolia, the Balkans and Cyprus and is hence often also referred to as Cypriot coffee and Turkish coffee as well as Greek coffee. It’s heated in a briki, the coffee pot, and served unfiltered, either as a ‘single’ in an espresso-sized cup, or as a ‘double’ in a slightly larger coffee cup.

What is frappé?

Frappé is another type of coffee associated with Greece, which first appeared in 1950s Thessaloniki. Frappé is iced instant coffee. Like freddo espresso, it’s also frothed up using a coffee mixer/frother/shaker and served with ice and a straw.

As espresso coffee began to gain popularity, frappé naturally evolved into the freddo espresso in the 1990s, which is the most recent, and arguably now the most popular of Greeks’ favourite coffee order. There are countless coffee shops in every neighbourhood, with enough demand for independents and chains to succeed side-by-side, where the most common order tends to be a freddo.

What is freddo espresso?

Freddo espresso is espresso coffee shaken with ice. Freddo cappuccino is freddo espresso with frothed milk added to it too. When ordering a freddo, it’s also necessary to specify how much sugar you want: sketo (no sugar), metrio (medium), glyko (sweet), with more variations between and beyond those options. Some people also ask for it to be served ahtipito – unbeaten (i.e. just an iced espresso without the foam). For the purpose of this recipe, don’t worry too much about what those words mean exactly – you can add sugar of your liking and to your liking (albeit at the right stage).