Published December 15th, 2025

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In Port-au-Prince, the night doesn’t arrive so much as it dresses—slipping into silk, fastening a cufflink of starlight, and stepping out to be admired.
The bar you find isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. Inside, everything gleams softly: marble with faint veins like old letters, gilt-edged mirrors catching candlelight, and a low kompa riff that moves like perfume across the room. You take your seat as if it’s been waiting for you all evening.
The bartender—immaculate, unhurried—sets a chilled martini glass on the counter as though it’s a jewel box. “Something decadent,” you say, and the smile you get back isn’t a question. It’s a promise.
From beneath the bar comes vanilla gelato, pale and glossy as satin. Then: the quiet drama of espresso, still breathing heat, and bottles with the confident posture of luxury—Lakai first, then Rhum Barbancourt 3*, and a flirt of Frangelico like a whispered compliment. Coffee liqueur follows, dark and glossy, the kind of sweetness that knows better than to shout.

Ice rattles in the shaker—brief thunder in a room built for secrets. The bartender shakes with the measured precision of someone fastening a necklace clasp. When the tin opens, a cold espresso fog rises for half a heartbeat, and the strain is clean and exact—liquid velvet cascading over gelato, forming a café-colored halo around the scoop.

Finally, the finishing touch: white and dark chocolate shaved so fine they fall like expensive confetti, catching light as they land. The drink is served not as a cocktail, but as a moment you can hold.

You lift the glass. The first sip is ice-cold espresso silk, and then the gelato melts into it—cream meeting coffee in an embrace that turns the whole thing into an after-hours dessert with a passport and perfect manners.

Tonight’s indulgence has a name, Port-au-Prince Affogato Espresso Martini.

Port-au-Prince Affogato Espresso Martini
Ingredients:

1 oz Lakai
1 oz Rhum Barbancourt 3*
1 oz fresh espresso (hot and just pulled)
0.25 oz Frangelico
0.5 oz coffee liqueur (Kahlúa or similar)
Vanilla gelato
Shaved white chocolate
Shaved dark chocolate

Method:

Chill a martini glass (freezer or ice-water rinse).
Add to a shaker with ice: Lakai, Rhum Barbancourt 3*, fresh espresso, Frangelico, coffee liqueur.
Shake hard until the tin is icy cold.
Place a generous scoop of vanilla gelato into the chilled martini glass.
Strain the cocktail over the gelato.
Finish with shaved white and dark chocolate over the top.

Glass:

Martini

Garnish:

Shaved white and dark chocolate

If you want it even more “penthouse”: use a small quenelle of gelato, double strain for extra gloss, and shave the chocolate right at the table.