Latte English-speaking countries "latte" is shorthand for "caffelatte" or "caffellatte" (from "caffè e latte", "coffee and milk"), which is similar to the French "café au lait", the Spanish "café con leche", the Catalan "cafè amb llet" or the Portuguese "galão." The Caffe Mediterraneum in Berkeley, California claims Lino Meiorin, one of its early owners, "invented" and "made the latte a standard drink" in the 1950s. The latte was popularized in Seattle, Washington in the early 1980s and spread more widely in the early 1990s. In northern Europe and Scandinavia, a similar "trend" started in the early 1980s as "café au lait"
Latte "Caffè latte", "Milchkaffee", "café au lait" and "café con leche" are domestic terms of traditional ways of drinking coffee, usually as part of breakfast in the home. Public cafés in Europe and the US it seems have no mention of the terms until the 20th century, although "Kapuziner" is mentioned in Austrian coffee houses in Vienna and Trieste in the 2nd half of 1700s as "coffee with cream, spices and sugar" (being the origin of the Italian cappuccino). According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the term "caffè latte" was first used in English in 1867 by William Dean Howells in