Chillin’ With the Homeboys

Ice-blended mocha leads the pack of coffee chillers in the race to dominate the billion-dollar specialty coffee market. Virtually every gourmet coffee shop or coffeehouse now whips up its own version of this summer’s wonder drink. Some places use regular coffee, others begin with espresso. Ice cream or frozen yogurt shops blend their own frozen products with coffee and chocolate powder.

Whether you’re on the cusp of the ice-blended trend or still nostalgic for hot mugs with Mrs. Olson, you may appreciate a guide to the chilling choices that are especially appealing when the mercury tops 100.

Let’s begin with the ice-blended drink that got everyone slurping coffee milkshakes last summer: Frappuccino. It was born at a Starbucks employees’ convention two summers ago in Los Angeles, where three employees suggested serving a cold blended coffee beverage. Last summer Frappuccino doubled the company’s cold coffee drink sales across the country.

The three employees got an award for their contribution to the company’s success. (It should be said that we spotted icy coffee drinks and slushes a few years back in Seattle coffeehouses and the Italians, of course, invented the granita, but we’re talking mass trend here.)

In true franchise fashion, Starbucks employees all over America were given no-brainer cartons of Frappuccino mix to blend with coffee or espresso to make coffee, mocha, rumba and espresso Frappuccinos. Selling for $3.50 per grande (that’s a size), the mocha Frappuccino offers a nice thick and icy texture, very grainy on the tongue, but overdoes it in the sugar and spice department. In short, Frappuccino may be the most popular ice-blended coffee drink out there. But it’s not the best-tasting.

Insomnia Cafe on Beverly Boulevard, one of the hipper coffeehouses in L.A., sells an ice-blended mocha for $3.94. It’s the best-selling blended drink at the cafe, but it lacks those tiny ice chips that are so refreshing. The flavor is not too sweet, and if you ask for whipped cream on top, you’ll definitely make it to the bottom of the glass.

Emerson’s Coffee House on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, known for its enjoyable atmosphere, also touts ice-blended mocha as its best-seller in the category. For $2.85 they’ll blend espresso, ice, chocolate powder and chocolate milk. It’s a good mocha but lacks texture and ends up tasting a little too much like really, really cold chocolate milk.

Nova Express Cafe, an elaborately decorated sci-fi coffeehouse on Los Angeles’ Fairfax Avenue, cites the ice-blended mocha and the Galaxy 69 as its two best-selling drinks. The mocha, at $2.95 for a single, is a strong coffee drink topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. Again, not enough ice chips, but it definitely tastes great. The Galaxy 69, a banana smoothie with a shot of espresso, sounds horrible but tastes wonderful. For $3.50, it also comes with whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. The texture is fantastic and the taste is, believe or not, subtle.

Baskin-Robbins includes two coffee flavors in its new line of Blast drinks. Both the mocha Blast and the cappuccino Blast are made with coffee syrup, milk, ice and any flavor ice cream you can stand. The mocha Blast is the more popular; the ice cream that patrons usually select for it is jamoca (a blend of java and mocha coffee ice creams). This version has a wonderful grainy texture resembling a coffee milkshake and sells for $2.49 regular, $3.29 “scoopersized.”

The nicest thing about coffee Blasts is freedom of choice. You can have your Blast blended with vanilla ice cream for a mellow flavor, chocolate ice cream for a double-mocha kick or, if you’re minding your weight, low-fat espresso ‘n’ cream ice cream or the nonfat jamoca swirl.

But the best ice-blended mocha we tasted is at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Nine years ago, Diane Martell, as manager of the Southland chain’s Westwood location, sensed the need for a cold, refreshing coffee drink. She grabbed a bottle of the chain’s coffee extract off the shelf of her store, some milk, some ice and a container of its hot chocolate drink mix. She played around with the quantities of the ingredients, and out of the blender came what she considers the best mocha-blended coffee beverage in the world. Martell is now regional manager.

Herbert B. Hyman, owner of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, still sells bottles, jars and containers full of specialty coffee product-line extensions, so customers can make their own blends at home. The recipe for Martell’s concoction is on labels of the coffee extract and the hot chocolate drink mix.

And if making an ice-blended mocha at home is still not convenient enough, Jeremy Gursey, film school student and owner of Mocha Kiss Coffee Co., will blend his brew of coffee, nonfat milk, chocolate powder and ice together for folks at work at $2.25 a pop. All he needs is 24 hours’ notice and 10 customers per office. His number is (818) 760-0984.