Australia’s Good Cafe Guides 2011
Posted by TheShot on 13 Jun 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Machine, Roasting
As many of you may know, we started CoffeeRatings.com in 2003 with the idea of making a printed, local, quantitative guide to San Francisco’s best coffee. Our fair city still lacks its own printed guide, but that hasn’t stopped cities such as Sydney and Melbourne in Australia from forging ahead: Mecca Espresso Ultimo Cafe of the Year In SMH Good Cafe Guide 2011, and The winners of The Age Good Cafe Guide Awards 2011.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne) have each just released inaugural Good Cafe Guide publications to promote the best coffeeshops in their respective hometowns. In Sydney, Mecca Espresso in Ultimo took top café honors while Auction Rooms in North Melbourne did the same for its mother city. Coffee Alchemy in Marrickville and Seven Seeds in Carlton each took their city’s respective top coffee prizes. (Note to Californians: Melbourne is sometimes referred as San Francisco to Sydney’s L.A.)
Each guide boasts around 250 reviewed cafés that make the cut, awarding points primarily for coffee quality. But the guides also reward a “café’s commitment to quality beans and a great experience.” As noted in the SMH article cited above, a number of cafés are rated with one, two, or three stars. In the printed guide, they are rated up to three “coffee cups” (rather than stars) — making them not unlike the chicchi awarded in the Gambero Rosso’s annual Bar d’Italia. (The Bar d’Italia uses up to three chicchi, or coffee beans, to rate an establishment’s coffee. Not to confuse things, but it additionally uses up to three coffee cups to rate these places for qualities other than their coffee.)
The SMH article also mentions some emerging trends for area coffeeshops, including naked portafilters, local microroasting, tasting rooms/cupping schools, new contraptions to showcase single origins, bone china cups (here here!), and economy-sized drinks such as the piccolo latte or mezzo-mezzo. In other words: today’s Sydney coffee culture sounds a lot like San Francisco circa 2008. But you have to forgive them, considering that Australia lacks a filter-brewed coffee culture and history.
While both of these printed guides are new, they enter a saturating market for printed city coffee guides in Australia.
3 Comments »
Talk to any Melbournian about Australian coffee history and they will point to their ready-made flow chart illustrating the influx of mediterranean immigrants in the 60s and 70s, congregating in particular in Melbourne (e.g. largest Greek community outside of Greece etc), and how this leads us to reason that Melbourne’s way is the authentic way and so on.
I can’t help the feeling that Australia will somehow return to what I see as its real roots in International Roast and Blend 43, and come up with handcrafted freeze-dried and instant coffee boutiques, complete with BYO sugar policy and everything.
Sorry about Australia not adopting poor quality American-style filter coffee over the years. – Filter has such a bad rep in Australia because of the poor offerings across the years in the States. Its the butt of many jokes and deserves a TRAVEL WARNING! America has damaged the potential for filter coffee globally. We have *bucks to than to defining how average espresso can be and the amount of milk to drink with espresso. … need I go on?
I wouldn’t apologize for the lack of filter coffee culture in Australia. We were just stating a fact.
The whole pour-over/vac pot/press single-origin-obsession thing is nice if you’re bored with espresso or your goal is to learn something new. But my steady favorite, something I drink to enjoy, has always been (and still is) espresso. Even if it’s no longer in vogue in a lot of coffee camps.
I guess I still prefer coffee as a concentrated taste, rather than something that fills you up or washes down your breakfast.
The next time I visit Australia, I won’t miss the filter coffee thing for a second…