by Lars Hundley
On a recent trip to Paris, I realized that there was a coffee option I kept seeing on the menu in various cafes that I was not familiar with — a noisette. What was it? I asked the waiter behind the bar in a cafe and then ordered a couple at different cafes to try it out and taste for myself.
First of all, if you speak some French, then the name of this coffee might confuse you and give you a misleading idea of what it actually is! The French word noisette means hazelnut.
But a noisette coffee has NO hazelnut or hazelnut flavoring in it. It’s called that because of the color of the resulting coffee drink, which is a brown color similar to the color of a hazelnut. Not because there is any actual hazelnut as an ingredient or flavoring.
But what is a noisette coffee exactly? It’s a shot of espresso with just a little bit of steamed milk and foam. It’s called a noisette because you use enough milk to give the coffee the color of a hazelnut.
It’s a little bit like a French version of an Italian macchiato, except that the Italian macchiato just has a little spoon of milk foam on top. The noisette has almost as much steamed milk as the espresso itself with a little bit of foam, so it’s milkier when you drink it and tastier in my opinion.
It’s a very small drink. Smaller than a cappuccino or a cortado.
This was my first noisette, and it was terrific. I really liked the flavor notes that were more traditional and mainstream chocolate notes and not too sour, fruity, floral or citrus. It was a very easy coffee to enjoy and appreciate.
I ran into this tiny little coffee shop in the 3rd District of Paris as I was walking around the Marais area. This noisette was the regular size and came in a little espresso sized mug. Where you’d see the espresso down in the bottom half of an espresso cup like this, you can see that a noisette has enough steamed milk added so that it fills up the entire little espresso cup. It’s the perfect amount of milk and I definitely prefer it to the Italian macchiato, which is just a spoon of foam and not really much milk at all, so a more intense espresso flavor.