Starbucks Latte Macchiato

The Starbucks Latte Macchiato carries 147 calories in a Grande and 89.1mg of caffeine, and it is built in the opposite order to everything else on the espresso menu. Steamed milk goes into the cup first, then the shots are poured slowly through it, which marks the milk rather than mixing into it. Macchiato means marked.

That order changes what you taste. Because the espresso lands last and sits near the top, the first mouthful is the strongest one and the drink gets milkier as you work down. The milk is lightly aerated rather than flat, so it has more body than a latte without the dry foam cap of a cappuccino. Look into the glass before stirring and the shots show as a dark band floating over pale milk.

Starbucks UK does not publish a delivery price for this one, which is why no figure appears above rather than an estimate. Calories run 64 in a Short, 113 in a Tall, 147 in a Grande and 194 in a Venti. Caffeine holds at 89.1mg through Tall and Grande and rises to 133.7mg in a Venti, the same two shot pattern as the rest of the espresso range.

The layers are the part worth protecting. They hold for two or three minutes in a glass, less in a paper cup where you cannot see them anyway, and the moment a spoon goes in the drink becomes a latte. Baristas pour the shots slowly for exactly this reason. Anyone ordering it to take away is paying for a presentation that will not survive the walk, which is a fair argument for drinking it in.

It is worth ordering when you want the shape of a latte with a stronger opening, and it rewards drinking without stirring. The name causes more confusion than any other drink on the UK menu, since most people who say macchiato mean the caramel version, which is this drink with vanilla syrup underneath and caramel sauce on top. Anyone who wants the same drink evenly mixed should order a Caffè Latte instead, and the Cappuccino covers the same milk volume with a much thicker foam layer.