I work in the coffee industry so maybe I'm a bit jaded here, but most of the edge in coffee that Australian's can claim to comes from that particular snobbishness that coffee seems to bring out in some people.

Don't get me wrong, you can get great coffee in Australia and they do genuinely care about it. But you can't get better coffee than you'll get by visiting a "third-wave" specialty coffee shop in any big city around the world. What you will get is a stronger helping of "our coffee is better than everyone else's" served alongside your cup. For a real sneer, if you dare, go into Melbourne coffee shop and order an Americano instead of a long black. Or maybe you'll get lucky and meet less condescending baristas there than I did. I certainly hope so.

> most of the edge in coffee that Australian's can claim to comes from that particular snobbishness that coffee seems to bring out in some people.

Well put and extensively documented in this short but worthwhile snapshot:

We've opened the edgiest most exclusive cafe in the whole world - and it's always closed...

Welcome to The Closed Cafe. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqw09I-BTvE

Ha that's great, thanks for sharing.

Aunty Donnas has a whole range of Melbourne cafe sketches too

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ChB2gn6rE4s

This one's my favorite

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EtLL30fO4gk

> For a real sneer, if you dare, go into Melbourne coffee shop and order an Americano instead of a long black.

That's stupid, it might be impressive they know the difference, but what if I actually wanted an Americano? (Hot water added, vs espresso pulled into it in a long black.)

I'm not so snobbish as to care (and I prefer lungo anyway - long shot all brewed, no pure water added) it just seems to me if they're going to be like that then they should recognise they're different and offer both. 'Certainly sir, or if you prefer we can do a long black too' sort of thing, acknowledging that the customer may be just as snobbish/knowledgeable, but accustomed to ordering Americano because 'long black' would generally raise eyebrows.

I do think in hindsight I may have experienced it though, in the UK - I didn't order, but my aunt or someone was told they don't do Americanos and came back with a filter coffee or something. At the time I thought they were just incompetent ('do you do espressos? Hot water?' I would have not been able to resist retorting) but now I think probably it was similar to your experience. Stupid.

> At the time I thought they were just incompetent ('do you do espressos? Hot water?' I would have not been able to resist retorting) but now I think probably it was similar to your experience. Stupid.

Yup, your aunt got a dose of coffee snobbishness I'm afraid. The worst I've experienced recently was when several of us went into a specialty coffee shop that I'd been recommended in Saigon. All except for one ordered ordered coffee. My last friend can't handle anything with caffeine so she asked what other drinks were on the menu. There were none, no non-coffee drinks and no decaf either. Eventually we asked what the ~5 year old child on the table beside us was drinking. Babychino (foamed milk). Great, it's not on the menu but she'll have one.

They charged us $6 for the babychino, or more even (180k VND I think). When we complained they pointed out the tiny print on the bottom of the bill that there's a surcharge for anyone who doesn't drink coffee. Imagine if a bar did that.

Where did you go in Saigon where you got such a high fee (or a fee in general for not having coffee)? I’m genuinely curious as in my experience, even at really touristy specialty coffee places the coffee based drinks were no more than 80k, and never had a fee for someone who didn’t drink something with coffee, so a fee so high sounds strange. Admittedly all the cafes I went to had some kind of juice, so it wouldn’t have been a problem in any case.

As a coffee snob with lots of Aussie and Kiwi friends, you _can_ get equally good coffee in other places, but in places like Melbourne and Wellington fantastic coffee is ubiquitous. In other places (e.g. London where I am) you have to go looking for it.

This. Excellent espresso can be found somewhere in most cities, but in Melbourne it is ubiquitous.

My litmus tests for coffee shops is to order a batch brew (if they don't do that, anything that's not based of an espresso). Good beans and proper machine maintenance can be tasted very well in the humble batch brew.