Espresso & Milk

• Espresso

  Espresso means "quick" in Italian, and that's the whole idea: press hot water through fine grounds fast, under real pressure, and you get a small, concentrated shot with the crema on top. Italian cafés were serving it this way by the early 1900s, once machines could hold that pressure at all.

• Americano

  The story goes that American GIs stationed in Italy during the Second World War found straight espresso too strong, so they'd stretch a shot with hot water to get something closer to what they drank at home. The name stuck even after the reason for it didn't.

• Flat White

  Australia and New Zealand have argued for decades over who actually invented the flat white, sometime in the 1980s — neither side has ever fully backed down. Whoever got there first, the point was a smaller, tighter pour than a latte: less froth, more coffee coming through.

• Latte

  "Latte" just means "milk" in Italian — caffè latte is "coffee milk." Italians drank it that way at home for a long time before American cafés picked it up in the 1980s, dropped "caffè," and it became a drink of its own.

• Cappuccino

  Named after the Capuchin friars, whose brown robes and hoods were said to resemble the colour of an espresso topped with foamed milk. The drink as we'd recognise it today came together in Italy once espresso machines could froth milk properly, in the early 20th century.

Matcha & Specials

• Hot Matcha

  Matcha is stone-ground green tea leaf, whisked rather than steeped, and it's been central to Japanese tea ceremony for centuries — the ritual around it is as old as the drink itself. Whisked hot with milk, it's a slower, earthier kind of green than a teabag ever gets close to.

• Iced Matcha

  Same stone-ground tea, just shaken cold over ice instead of whisked hot. It's a newer way to drink something old — matcha's centuries-old in Japan, iced matcha is mostly a last-decade café thing, but it works.

• Seasonal Puree Specials