Cuban Coffee!

No visit to Key West is complete without sampling a well-made cafecito (aka Cuban Coffee) and this little hole-in-the wall served up the BEST! 🙂

Cafecito consists of sweet “crema”  floating on top of VERY strong espresso.  The technique for making the crema (not the origin of the bean!) is what makes the coffee “Cuban.”  Despite its name, crema has nothing to do with dairy products—it’s actually foam made from raw sugar that’s been thoroughly beaten with a splash of coffee.

As with American coffee, there are different cafecito choices, depending on your mood or preference.  I ordered Café-con-leche which is similar to a hot latte with steamed milk; Maggie chose Cortadito, a “con-leche” on steroids with a double shot of espresso.

As you can see in the top photo, the weather that day was iffy: a downpour began right as our order was ready, so we waited it out (with one of the island’s many wild roosters!) on the adjacent porch at Mac’s Sea Garden Souvenir Shop.

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But I digress; this post is meant to be about coffee 😉

Anyway….the next day dawned bright and sunny…perfect for an early morning trip to Smathers Beach.

While Maggie was walking, I looked for a coffee concession, but nada, no luck! 😦  Then it dawned on me 💡 Didn’t the Coffee Queen menu boast “We deliver?”  Would they actually come to a beach?!?

Yup!!!

For a 10.00 minimum, they’ll come to a beach…in fact, they’ll go anywhere you want!  Of course that makes for some pretty expensive coffee, but it was vacation, and it was FUN! We also had them throw in a Cuban Bagel, which we didn’t think to photograph due to going mental over the delivery idea!

“There’s a Cuban Bagel in this bag!”

FYI, if you have an espresso machine or Italian moka pot you can make a proper cafecito at home. To get you started, I found a link to a really good wiki about the process!

Until next time……

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• Miami Cubans sharing culture through ‘cafecito’ campaign (repeatingislands.com)
• What is Espresso? (konamountaincoffee.wordpress.com)
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• Cafecito
• Cuban Coffee
• Cuban Coffee Queen
• Key West Florida
• Smathers Beach