Whenever I travel, I order my coffee the way the locals drink it. In Puerto Rico, that means freshly roasted beans from the island served as a cortadito: a small cup of strong espresso with a bit of steamed milk. When in Spain, I look forward to getting a java jolt from a café con leche – thick, syrupy, stain-your-teeth espresso with oily crema, topped with steamed milk – before the plane has even landed. I don’t have a trip to Greece or Turkey planned anytime soon, but there is a place to settle my fix for beverages from such Mediterranean countries around town: Café Nova, located in the Princeton Heights neighborhood at 5611 S. Kingshighway Blvd.

Café Nova owners Denis and Anna Kici make a fine cup of Turkish coffee: one heck of a strong brew with just the right amount of sweetness. The whole coffee experience here is so authentic that Anna Kici will even chance to tell you your fortune once the grounds have settled to the bottom of that wee cup.

Another traditional hot beverage offering at Café Nova is salep (pictured). Often consumed in Greece and Middle Eastern countries, salep is made from steamed milk and powdered, dried orchid bulbs. While some versions also include water, honey and dried figs, the salep prepared at Café Nova stays simple with the milk and powdered orchid but gets aromatic heft from ground nutmeg, vanilla bean and cinnamon. It’s a soothing drink that makes for a nice dessert sipper when you don’t feel like a super-sweet finish to a meal.

When it comes to cold drinks, Café Nova more than satisfies with its real-deal frappé. For Starbucks regulars, the word “frappe” likely conjures an image of the company’s trademarked line of chilled coffee beverages known as Frappuccinos. But the global coffee chain’s sweet, milky (Is there even any coffee in there?) drink topped with a mound of whipped cream, pales in comparison to the authentic Greek iced coffee mixed with evaporated milk and sugar served up at this Princeton Heights coffeehouse. The drink is a perfect combination of sweet, creamy and coffee – coffee that you can actually taste – with a hefty layer of froth on top. Served in a large pint glass, it’s no wonder that Greeks, Albanians and other European and Middle Eastern immigrants chat for hours at Café Nova while nursing one of the sweet frappés. Nope, I don’t have a plane ticket to the Mediterranean this summer, but I know where I can survive.

By Ligaya Figueras

Tags: Anna Kici, Café Nova, coffee, Denis Kici, Drink This Weekend Edition, Princeton Heights

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