Australia's top 5 coffee gifts to the world
As the flat white prepares to conquer the tastebuds of US coffee drinkers, thanks to Starbucks adding the Aussie (or is it Kiwi?) invention to its menu of shorts, talls, grandes and caramel ventis, we count down five of the antipodes' other great contributions to cafe culture.
With a combination of solid Italian espresso culture, Anglo-Saxon tastebuds and a pinch of New World iconoclasm (and unhampered by the weak diner brews endemic in the US) Australians and New Zealanders have become coffee innovators. These are some of our other gifts to the world's coffee drinkers:
The piccolo latte
A 30ml espresso shot topped up with milk in an 80ml demitasse glass, the piccolo is said to have been invented by baristas and roasters in Sydney who wanted to taste their coffee with milk throughout the day without drinking too much cow juice. Not to be confused with the American cortado, which comes in a bigger glass.
The long black
We'll claim this, too: a double shot of espresso poured into a cup that already contains 70ml of hot – but not boiling – water, which means that a good long black arrives with crema. The Northern Hemisphere version, the Americano, has no crema because the hot water is added to the espresso after the pour, breaking up the crema.
The reusable takeaway cup
The Melbourne founders of lunch chain Bluebag, siblings Abigail and Jamie Forsyth, were horrified at how much landfill their business was generating – especially in takeaway coffee cups. So in 2009 they launched the KeepCup. They've now sold more than 3.5 million KeepCups in 30-odd countries around the world, and spawned a host of imitators.
The Little Guy
Back in 2005, Sydnesider Craig Hiron looked at his stovetop coffee brewer and wondered whether it couldn't be improved so that it would make real espresso shots and texture milk, too. Working with industrial designers and a professor of thermal dynamics, Hiron came up with The Little Guy, a genuine stovetop espresso and caffelatte maker that's a riff on the classic 1947 Italian design by Giordano Robiatti, imitations of which are sometimes now often found languishing in op-shops.
Decent coffee and avo smash
When Stella and Anna Rice from Brisbane arrived in Paris in the late noughties, they were shocked at the terrible coffee: expensive, weak brews made with UHT milk. So with fellow Australian Rain Laurent they started a cafe, Tuckshop, serving flat whites, long blacks and avocado toast, and helping to launch the specialty coffee boom in the French capital. Paris now has plenty of cafes selling third wave coffee, including Le Coutume (part-owned by Australian Tom Clarke) and Holybelly, whose owners, Nico Alary and Sarah Mouchot, worked in Melbourne cafes for three years. A Soho espresso bar called Flat White opened by New Zealander Cameron McClure in 2005 kick-started London's coffee renaissance, and Sydney roaster Toby's Estate opened in Brooklyn, New York in 2012, quickly followed by an Australian cafe invasion of the Big Apple lauded by New York Times food writer Oliver Strand last year.