Languages / English / Level 1 · Unit 3

Coffee Culture — Café Vocabulary

Lesson 13 of 170 · Level 1 of 6All lessons
In this lesson

You are learning café vocabulary: you will read the scene it happens in, take apart the pattern behind them (coffee vocabulary + café culture), hear them in a conversation, rehearse them, and finish by saying one thing out loud to be graded.

The scene

Café Integral in Nolita or any of NYC's excellent third-wave coffee shops. New York's coffee vocabulary is complex: oat milk or almond? Flat white or cortado? Large or grande? Three phrases decode it all.

Café Integral — The Perfect Cup

Café Integral on Nolita's Elizabeth Street sources all its coffee directly from farms in Nicaragua, Colombia, and Guatemala. The café is tiny — six bar stools, a turntable playing jazz, a single espresso machine that a barista named Jonas treats with medical precision.

The stranger sits at the bar. "What's the single origin today?"

Jonas looks up. "Colombian — Huila, washed process. Citrusy, a little floral."

"I'd like a cortado with that, please. For here."

The coffee arrives: small glass, equal parts espresso and steamed milk, a thin crema. He takes a sip. The citrus is there, the floral note, and something that might be brown sugar.

"This is excellent. So smooth."

Jonas nods — the nod of someone who knows they've made it right. "What's the wifi password?" the stranger asks. "No wifi," Jonas says. "Just coffee."