Almost all of the drinks that I didn't understand are made with espresso. Espresso is a quickly made, and very concentrated coffee made by forcing hot water at very high pressure through very finely ground coffee. HIgh pressures are required because the coffee beans are ground to a flour-like consistency and low pressures can't get water through it. You can drink espresso plain if you are hard core, or the barista (coffee maker person) adds that shot of espresso to milk, foamed milk, cream, chocolate, etc.
Italians were the first ones to get fancy with the espresso, thus all these coffee terms are just mostly Italian words. Example: espresso = express (because espresso can be made fairly quickly), breve = short, caffe = coffee.
Also:
* Latte means milk (espresso with hot milk added).
* Macchiato means marked or stained (espresso that has been marked with a dallop of foamed milk).
* Americano means American. American GI's just wanted a regular cup of coffee so they just added hot water to espresso to dilute it.
* Cappuccino is named after the Capuchin monks who wore a tan robe/garment and a cappuccino is a light brown color (espresso with milk and foamed milk). This is the one that they can make fancy patterns in while adding the foamed milk.
* Crema means cream but it isn't cream. It is the cream-like substance made by carbon dioxide that comes from the ground coffee but was dissolved at the high pressures that espresso is made at. The CO2 comes out when it comes to atmospheric pressure. So it's has no bearing on the taste of espresso at all, but many customers just want to see it.
* Mocha isn't Italian, but is an old word associated with coffee that just came to mean "with chocolate and milk". In fact, you can make a mocha by adding a hot chocolate packet to a cup of regular coffee.
* au lait = French for "with milk". I don't think this is different from a latte, except that maybe au lait may not be made with espresso.
When you use foreign words it sounds so much more exotic and that you should be willing to pay more for it. For example: "caffe latte" sounds so much sexier than "milk coffee", and 'macchiato" is so much more exotic than "foamy milk coffee".
