Cortado | The Optimal way to Consume Coffee
I’m willing to bet that everyone’s coffee journey starts the same way. Essentially drinking a dessert with a whisper of coffee in it. Maybe it’s a caramel-drizzled frappuccino, a hot chocolate with a rogue espresso shot, or something so sweet it barely even qualifies as coffee. But over time the training wheels come off. You move through the ranks, maybe dabbling in cappuccinos, flirty little macchiatos, and eventually staring into the abyss of a pure, no-nonsense black coffee. Whether it’s the bottomless cup at a 24-hour diner or the burnt offering from a flight attendant at 30,000 feet, at some point, you hit rock-bottom bitterness.
But somewhere in between, you discover your perfect cup. And I found mine.
Of all my travels, there are a few trips that fundamentally changed me. One of those was a five-day adventure in Sicily in 2021. If you follow our pod and blog, you’ll hear all about it, but for now, here’s a little nugget of one of the many things that changed me that week. The Espresso.
Now, we all know Italian espresso is on another level. I wanted to appreciate it in its purest form, so I went straight for the good stuff, sometimes with a touch of sugar because, you know, balance. But when I got home the espresso just wasn’t hitting the same. It needed milk. But not a full-blown latte. I had graduated from milk-heavy drinks. No shade to latte lovers, live your truth. But I also wasn’t feeling the americano life. So I started digging. Researching. Experimenting.
And that’s when I found it. The peak coffee experience.
The Cortado.
A beautiful balance of a double shot of espresso and an equal amount of steamed milk. Simple. Smooth. Unmatched.
Unlike lattes and cappuccinos, the milk in a cortado isn’t heavily foamed. It’s just enough to cut the acidity of the espresso, which is literally what "cortado" means in Spanish. And for me, this was it. The perfect way to drink coffee. Not for everyone, but for me, game over.
Then we had some friends visit. Naturally, we took them to Mr. West, an A-plus casual café that I highly recommend. I ordered a cortado. Offered a sip to our friend, a fellow coffee obsessive, someone who gets it.
The next day, instead of his usual flat white, he ordered a cortado.
By that evening, he made it official. He was no longer a flat white guy. He was a cortado guy.
It wasn’t just me.
That’s two case studies. Enough evidence for The Bag Tag to declare once and for all. The Cortado is the optimal way to consume coffee.
Now go forth and sip accordingly.