As you travel Greece and decide to stop for a refreshment, you will notice quite a few people around you sipping a cold drink, dark with a foamy head. This is the famous ubiquitous Cafe FrappéYou will see construction workers, office workers and shop keepers sipping on a Frappé when they stop for a coffee break in the summer.
Were you aware that a Dritsas was involved with the discovery? I don’t think he was a member of our Dritsas family, but who knows?
Here is a history of the Cafe Frappé from the Nestle site and the Wikipedia.
Cafe Frappé. A Greek discovery, global success!
From the Nestle Greek site http://www.nescafe.gr/html/story-nescafe-gr.htm. [Translation by vma]
An employee working at the NESTLÉ ® booth at the Thessaloniki International Fair in 1957, had an idea.
He mixed the coffee with cold water in a shaker. The mix … foamed up and decorated him with a stain on his suit, anointing him the FATHER” of the NESCAFÉ ® Frappé!
Since then, the frozen drink has come a long way. From it’s birthplace in Thessaloniki – the Mekka of the Frappe – it has conquered the world.
With the straw and the foam as it’s trademarks, it acquired it’s own vocabulary and it’s own life style. A name forever identified with the culture of Greece.
The following is from Wikipedia (English)
Greek frappé (Café frappé) (Greek: φραπές, frapés)
is a foam-covered iced coffee drink made from spray-dried instant coffee. It is very popular in Greece especially during summer, but has now spread on to other countries. It is the basis for the North America Iced Cappucino as well as the Anglo-European Float and the European Frappuccino.
In French, when describing a drink, the word frappé means shaken and or chilled; however, in popular Greek culture, the word frappé is predominantly taken to refer to the shaking associated with the preparation of a café frappé.
History of The Frappé
Frappé dates back to the 1957 International Trade Fair in Thessaloniki. a distributor of Nestlé products, Yannis Dritsas . The Dritsas Coffee Company was exhibiting a new product for children, a chocolate beverage produced instantly by mixing it with milk and shaking it in a shaker. Dritsas’ employee Dimitris Vakondios was looking for a way to have his usual instant coffee during his break but he could not find any hot water, so he mixed the coffee with cold water and a shaker.
This improvised experiment established this popular Greek beverage. Frappé has been marketed chiefly by Nestlé and has amazingly been the most popular drink in Greece. More recently, Kraft, under the Jacobs label, have launched their own brand of frappé. Frappé has been called the national coffee of Greece, and is available at virtually all cafes, where it is typically served with a glass of water.
In 2006 food critic Daniel Young teamed up with his wife, editor Vivian Constantinopoulos, to write Frappé Nation, the coffee-table book about the history and culture of Greek frappé.
Recipe
- In a shaker or jar (with a tight-fitting lid), add 2-3 tablespoons of cold water, 1 teaspoon of instant coffee, and sugar to taste (1 teaspoon of sugar for medium-sweet).
- Close tightly and shake for 10 seconds, until the mixture appears to be all foam.
- Pour the foam into a water glass, add 7-8 ounces of water, 3-4 ice cubes, milk to taste, and stir.
- Serve with a straw.
If you have a soda fountain-type drink mixer or a small electric drink mixer, put the ingredients in step 1 into a glass to start, create the foamy base, and then add the water, ice cubes, milk, and straw to serve.
Sources:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frappé_coffee
Nestle: http://www.nescafe.gr/html/story-nescafe-gr.htm