What is a Canadiano coffee?
A canadiano (pronounced kan-uh-DEE-AH-no) is a coffee drink made by diluting espresso with hot water. It is a renaming of the classic americano to protest threats made by the President of the USA against Canada.
Canadiano origins
The canadiano is a tongue in cheek renaming of the americano to protest threats made by Donald Trump against Canada, specifically the threat of tarriffs and the threat to turn Canada into the 51st state of America.
The result of these threats was a nationwide boycott of US goods – with consumers "buying Canadian" instead of American. So, of course, cafe's naturally changed the 'American' part of americano to 'Canadian' – and so the canadiano was born.
Freedom fries and other renaming protests
Renaming consumer goods for political reasons isn't new – one famous example was the short lived attempt to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries as a protest against France refusing to invade Iraq.
Wikipedia has a list of politcally motivated renamings which contains a similar gem — the WW1 attempt to rename saurkraut to libery cabbage.
Russiano coffee
Similarly to canadaino coffee, in 2016 Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev suggested that the americano be renamed the russiano.
Perhaps in our growing isolationist world the americano will only ever be named after the country you happen to be in when you're ordering it.
