Drink & meze Afternoon, and slowly

Frappé

The foam that took hold at the 1957 fair and became a national drink.

The frappé is the most Greek drink that exists almost nowhere else, and Thessaloniki claims its birth.

The story, as it is told

In 1957, at the 22nd International Fair of Thessaloniki, the Dritsa company represented Nestlé's instant coffee in Greece. At the stand they were promoting a new chocolate drink for children, prepared by mixing it with milk in a shaker.

An employee, Dimitris Vakondios, wanted a coffee and had no hot water. He used the shaker with cold water instead, and got the foam.

How true is it

Worth saying plainly: cold instant coffee existed before this. Nestlé advertisements from the 1930s and 1940s already suggested drinking it iced. The fair story is the most widely repeated urban legend, not a documented invention.

What is not disputed is that the Greek frappé — the thick foam, the shaker, the tall glass — was established here and spread from here across the country. And the setting fits: the fair was where post-war Greece saw new things first.

What makes it a frappé

The foam. It is not decoration — it is the drink. It comes from whipping the instant coffee with a little water before the rest and the ice go in. A good frappé holds its foam to the last sip; a bad one loses it in ten minutes.

This is why a frappé cannot be made with filter or espresso. It needs instant, and that is what keeps it out of third-wave cafés.

How to order it

Two axes, and you have to state both:

Sweetness: sketos (no sugar), metrios (medium), glykos (sweet)
Milk: with or without

So "metrios with milk", or "sketos without". Ask simply for "a frappé" and you will be asked again.

When people drink it

All day, but mostly in the afternoon, and mostly slowly. A frappé is not a coffee you drink and leave. It is a ticket to two hours at a table, and in Thessaloniki that is an institution rather than a figure of speech.

In summer you will see it everywhere along the waterfront and at the tables on Aristotelous. In recent years the freddo espresso has taken a large share, especially among younger drinkers — but the frappé has not gone, and in the city that established it you order one without explaining anything.

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