Honolulu Weekly

Downtown Coffee / It’s hard not to become a regular at Downtown Coffee. The Fort Street Mall location is unassuming, but once those who stumble upon it taste one of owner Charles Nelson’s concoctions, well, as one regular we met at the store put it, “he makes Starbucks taste like mud.” Nelson is thoughtful about the products he uses and he creates each drink with astonishing care. And while he may always be smiling, he is also serious–“fanatical,” he says–about serving the highest quality coffee. We asked him to tell us about five espresso drinks that everyone should try.

1. Macchiatos are good. In Italian, macchiato means marked. It’s an espresso shot and it has the same amount of foam on top as espresso, so it’s marked with foam. We make a traditional macchiato.

2. A wet cappuccino. You know, sometimes you get a cappuccino with the almost bubble bath foam but ours has really fine bubbles so it’s über silky. I like the short double wet cappuccino. It’s really nice. It’s something that not everyone has tried.

3. There’s the flat white. It’s a latte but with no foam. It’s extremely popular in Australia and New Zealand. We get a couple of people who come in and ask for it. It’s smooth, really nice.

4. The iced Thai latte–that’s condensed milk mixed with espresso–makes for a really nice, strong, thick flavor. It’s like a little bit sweeter version of the latte.

5. We have the iced red eye or black eye. It’s iced coffee–and that we make really fresh. We have a glass jar and we put ice in it. Then you put the filter over it and pour the water over the grounds into the jar. We make all of our iced coffee fresh. Some places just refrigerate coffee that’s already been made. To me, that’s already old. The way we do it, we don’t cut corners. The ice locks in the aromatics. It’s much better than if you just put a pot in the fridge. From there, we add a shot of Black Cat espresso. One shot for a red eye, two shots for a black eye. It’s the strongest drink in the house, by far. It’s a good pick-me-up.

Fendu Boulangerie

Hearth baked breads, rustic gourmet pizzas, elegant desserts