One of the many excellent things multiculturalism has bequeathed Australia is an appreciation of proper Italian coffee. Not the insipid, bitter-tasting brown water that Americans still down by the gallon, not the cream-poisoned light brown dishwater that my English ancestors used to drink. We love our coffee brewed with steam and pressure, the way they serve it at every local espresso bar across Italy.
I remember when my parents first got into cappuccinos when I was a little primary school kid in the 1980s. Every meal at our favourite local pizzeria Zia Pina’s would end with each of them downing a delicious-looking frothy concoction with chocolate sprinkles on top.
Back then, nobody had invented the babyccino, so they would generously grant my brother and me a teaspoon each of their sweet, sweet chocolate-laced froth, and then enjoy the rest of the deliciousness themselves.
The mighty cappuccino was Australians’ gateway drug to Italian-style coffee, and before long, my folks were onto espressos – or short blacks, as we ended up calling them here.
I remember my first teenage cappuccino, at Bill & Toni’s in Sydney’s Darlinghurst pasta belt. I poured in a ridiculous amount of sugar so that it didn’t taste too much like coffee – but within a year or two, I was drinking them without it.
Like many Australians, I ended up with the flat white as my default order, a variation that’s not common in Italy, where they drink cappuccino for breakfast. I once had one in Rome that came pre-sugared, and melted in my mouth. I tend to reduce my milk consumption throughout the day – one flat white is about my limit.
I spent years trying to determine my favourite combination of coffee and milk, and if you think that there is no need for any gradation between a flat white and a macchiato, and frankly even a macchiato is an unnecessary sop to people who should just grow up and drink a neat espresso, then this article is not for you.
Because it turns out there are quite a lot of other options that I’ve come across in my coffee nerd adventures around the world. Most often, I’ve tried them in the hope of finding something approximating a flat white – but it is a tribute to the quality of our baristas and their spreading influence that an increasing number of cafés around the world now understand the quintessentially Australian coffee order.
Some of these options can be found in Australia, and some, dare I say it, might even supplant the flat white as my favourite if they were more readily available.
At the very least, going into your favourite café and ordering them will either impress or irritate the long-suffering barista – probably both.
Piccolo latte – most Australian cafés are across these, but it’s nevertheless still a fairly rare order. It’s basically a latte with roughly 1/3 of the milk, but still textured like a latte, so avoids the froth that tends to be a feature of the macchiato. Well worth giving a go if you don’t want a full-on milky coffee in the afternoon, but don’t want anything too strong either.
Long macchiato – whereas a macchiato is an espresso ‘marked’ by milk, the long version is a long black with a proportional amount of hot milk. Due to the increased volume, there usually isn’t so much froth, which is undoubtedly a good thing.
Noisette – this literally means hazelnut in French, and it’s the when travelling in that country, which tends to serve its coffee either black and strong or utterly drowning in milk (café creme). It’s kind of halfway between a piccolo latte and a macchiato. (You may well get something like a flat white if you order a café au lait nowadays, though.)
Cortado – I’ve only seen this in America, where it’s like a 3/4 flat white, served in an appropriately scaled-down flat white style cup in some places, or a small latte glass in others. Supposedly the coffee and milk volumes are roughly equal. The perfect thing to order if they don’t speak flat white.
Gibraltar – Supposedly this hails from the well-known Blue Bottle Coffee chain in San Francisco, and is named after it comes in, which is a bit larger than a shot glass. I very much enjoyed about how it was devised by hipsters who didn’t understand the proper size for a cappuccino. Allegedly they’re made with double shots, which goes for many milk drinks in the US. Some say it’s the same as a cortado – in my experience, the latter is a little larger, and doesn’t necessarily have a double shot.
Magic – this might just be the best of them all, and it’s probably the fussiest. I’ve only ever seen this in Australia, and though some claim it , I first came across it in Sydney at Joe Black, near Hyde Park. It’s a double ristretto with about 3/5 the milk of a regular flat white.
To understand the point of this, you need to watch for those videos of really . The very first burst out of the machine is considered the purest and best tasting, so a double ristretto is a double shot of grounds, but with less water, so it’s supposedly not as strong as a full double shot, because you aren’t extracting as much of the coffee. I hope that makes sense – but if not, go to a café and ask for one. The genius of it is that if the barista hasn’t heard of a ‘magic’, you’ll look ridiculous asking for one, but then you’ll win when the barista, maddened by the idea that there might be a coffee order they haven’t heard of, is forced to look it up. Sheer magic.
Ristretto – not a milk coffee, but of course, you can order one of these without all the fuss that goes into a Magic. They’re delicious, and if you can handle an espresso, they don’t taste that much stronger.
Then there’s the Americano. Attempting to replicate the drip filter so beloved of Americans with an espresso, this is like an even more insipid long black – my least favourite coffee order, at least partly because they’re so often bitter – but frequently comes even weaker and indeed even sourer. The fact that its name is the Italian term for ‘American’ should be warning enough against ordering one.
Even more disappointing, at least conceptually, is the Redeye, which attempts to compensate for the deficit of the Americano by adding an espresso shot to it. Let’s just say that the fact that it’s present on the says all you need to know about it. That same menu contains what we Australians consider .
Now, I realise that this is an incredibly snobby article about coffee. But let’s face it – at the point where we stopped drinking instant coffee, and leaving our French presses untouched because we only drink espresso, we became a nation of coffee snobs. I make no apology for taking it a little bit further, especially when I reckon most flattie fans would love a magic if they tried one.
Of course, there’s a whole world of post-espresso cold drip and Aeropress options that I won’t even bother with here. But I hope it’s useful to know that if you like milk in your coffee, there are an awful lot of options out there.
