Greek Frappé

The Greek frappé (φραπέ, often written frappe) is iced coffee made from instant coffee: you shake the coffee with sugar and a splash of cold water until it turns into a thick, creamy foam, pour it over ice, and top it up with cold water and, if you like, evaporated milk. It’s drunk slowly, through a straw, all summer long, and Vice calls it Greece’s national drink. Here’s how to make one, how to order one in Greece, and why its famous origin story is probably a legend.

The short version

• Instant coffee, sugar and cold water, shaken into a foam, then poured over ice.
• Ordered by sweetness: sketo (none), metrio (medium) or gliko (sweet).
• Milk on request: me gala (with) or horis gala (without), usually evaporated milk.
• About two minutes to make, in a shaker, a jar or a blender.
• Born in 1957 at the Thessaloniki fair, says Nescafé; older adverts say otherwise.

What’s in a frappé?

Just instant coffee, water, ice and, usually, sugar. The LA Times recipe by food writer Daniel Young, co-author of the book Frappé Nation, uses:

Ingredient	Amount (LA Times)	Roughly
Instant coffee	1 rounded teaspoon
Sugar	2 teaspoons (metrio)
Cold water for the foam	¼ cup	60 ml
Ice	Half a tall glass	14 oz glass, about 400 ml
Evaporated milk (optional)	¼ cup	60 ml
Cold water to top up	¼ to ⅓ cup	60–80 ml

The foam is the point. INeedCoffee explains that proteins in the coffee act as surfactants, forming a thin, elastic skin around each air bubble. Because instant coffee can be dissolved into a very concentrated solution with only a little water, there are plenty of those proteins, and shaking gives a thick foam that lasts. That’s why you shake with a small amount of water first and add the rest afterwards. Vice notes that the foam stays in the glass for a long time, which is part of why a frappé is sipped over hours of conversation.

How do you order one in Greece?

In two parts: sweetness, then milk.

Say	Means	Sugar (LA Times, per teaspoon of coffee)
Sketo	Plain	None
Metrio	Medium sweet	2 teaspoons
Gliko	Sweet	3 teaspoons
Me gala	With milk	Almost always evaporated milk
Horis gala	Without milk

Vice records a little frappé slang too: a watery one is nerozoumi, an over-sweet one petimezi (grape molasses), and one that’s too strong dynamitis (dynamite).

How do you make one without a shaker?

Use a jar with a tight lid, or a blender for about 10 seconds, as the LA Times suggests. Any instant coffee will foam when shaken with water, the LA Times found, though Greeks look for the bitter bite of their own Nescafé. Pour the milk and the final water down the side of the glass so the foam stays on top.

Where did the frappé come from?

The story everyone tells comes from Nescafé: at the Thessaloniki International Fair in 1957, a Nescafé representative, Dimitris Vakondios, couldn’t find hot water during a break, so he shook his instant coffee with cold water and ice in a shaker, and the frappé was born. INeedCoffee, telling it “according to popular legend”, adds that he was working for Andreas Dritsas, Nestlé’s Greek distributor, and grabbed a shaker meant for Nesquik. Thessaloniki’s tourist board calls the city the “capital” of frappé.

Greek newspaper Kathimerini isn’t convinced. Michalis Katsigeras found that the story is younger than the drink:

Date	Evidence	Source
1894	A “cafe frappe” is served at a tea in Lakewood, New Jersey (The New York Times)	Kathimerini
1948	The Petrograd on Stadiou Street, Athens, advertises café frappé	Kathimerini
1950	An advert for iced Nescafé	Kathimerini
1951	In the film Propantos psychraimia, a character jokes that one slip and “they’ll turn us into a frappé”	Kathimerini
July 1957	Nestlé adverts recommend “Nescafé frappé” when it’s very hot, two months before the fair	Kathimerini
Sept 1957	The Vakondios story at the Thessaloniki fair	Nescafé, INeedCoffee
1963	A Nescafé advert says simply: beat Nescafé, sugar and cold water	INeedCoffee

Kathimerini says the first doubts were raised by Nikos Bakounakis in To Vima in 2006. INeedCoffee adds that an early Nestlé brochure blended evaporated milk, water, Nescafé and vanilla ice cream, closer to the French café frappé, and that ice cream had dropped out of Nescafé’s recipe by 1963. Where and when the shaken drink took the name frappé is, as INeedCoffee puts it, uncertain. Either way, Nescafé advertised it heavily, Vice notes, with jingles in the 1980s that a generation of Greeks still knows by heart.

General guidance only. A frappé made with two or three spoonfuls of instant coffee is strong, so go easy if you’re sensitive to caffeine.

Frappé vs other iced coffees

• Freddo espresso: Greece’s newer favourite, made with espresso instead of instant.
• Freddo cappuccino: a freddo espresso with cold milk foam.
• Dalgona coffee: instant coffee whipped, not shaken, and spooned over milk.
• Caffè shakerato: Italy’s espresso shaken with ice.
• Cold brew: the slow way to make cold coffee, brewed for hours.

Explore every drink in the iced and blended chapter.