Raf coffee

Raf coffee is a sweet espresso drink made with cream, vanilla sugar and steamed together in the milk pitcher. It appeared in Moscow in the late 1990s and is one of the few coffee innovations that originated in Russia.

History

The most widely told account places its origin at the Moscow coffeehouse Coffee Bean in 1996 or 1997. According to tradition, a regular customer named Rafael asked the staff for something new rather than a standard coffee, and three baristas, Gleb Neveykin, Artem Berestov and Galina Samokhina, devised a smoother, sweeter drink for him. Patrons began ordering "a coffee like Raf's," and the name gradually shortened to raf.

As baristas moved between cafés, the drink spread to coffeehouses across Russia. By 2018 it was also being made in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. Outside the former Soviet Union it is almost unknown, although isolated reports mention it in some Czech cafés, in Israel and in Indonesia.

Culture

Raf is especially popular in Moscow and across Russia, where it reflects a taste for soft, sweet coffee drinks. The recipe uses about 35 mL of espresso, to which warm cream and vanilla sugar are added, the mixture heated to about 65 °C, and it is often dusted with ground cinnamon.

Variations include maple syrup, honey in place of sugar, elderberry syrup or lavender. Some Russian coffee experts criticise it because the cream and vanilla mask the aroma of the espresso, while others see it as a characteristic expression of Russian coffee culture.