I was reading Specialty-Coffee.com this morning over a cup of coffee and came across a cool link to to a blog with illustrations of traditional coffee drinks. The name of the author/illustrator is Lokesh Dhakar and thats the name of his blog too.
The illustration on the left is a traditional cappuccino, this is the original espresso drink you might find in Europe that the American coffeehouse Cappuccino is based on. You can clearly see the 3 equal parts that make up a traditional capp - espresso, steamed milk and milk foam.
When you order a "trad cap" at Moko we build it just like the illustration. First the barista crafts a 1.75 oz. double shot of Black Cat directly into our Intelligentsia winged demitasse like this one. Then he steams and froths the milk pouring 1.75 oz.'s of milk and foam into the cup. Does that come up to 4.75oz.? Let's see 1.75oz. X 3, Well it might be a little more than what the cup holds but if everything comes together just right the foam will mound up above the rim of the cup in what is called a monkshead and that little bit more should get us up to the total amount we want. Anyways the trad capp sure stays truer to the rule of thirds than our American capps that can be about 2oz's of espresso to 10 or more oz's of milk and froth.
Take a look at Lokesh's blog if you get a chance. I think its pretty cool and we need to tweek his idea some and use it in the coffee bar, what do you think?