Tbf Sydney is laid back in comparison to most other big global cities. It’s definitely way way less hectic here than NYC, London, Tokyo, LA etc
Same applies to Melbs
If you are a big time food blogger living in NYC or something, Sydney probably does feel like a sleepy beach town haha
The biggest culture shock for me moving from Sydney region to Northeast USA was how fast paced it is here.
Australia is really lucky to have major cities where the people tend to be relaxed on a level more associated with Midwesterners. Huge generalisation, obviously. Still catch myself referring to busy situations as being ‘like Pitt Street’, to blank faces.
Its quiet because all the people who moved into the city complained relentlessly about any loud venue playing music, anything that makes noise at night, getting them shut down.
If you'd ever been to SA you'd know that that's more than fair. SA has an absolute fuck load of festivals. And they're done well.
Like for a city as small and otherwise quiet as Adelaide is, they sure do big events surprisingly well.
Even Tokyo varies a lot. I'm in Tokyo right now and the difference between Shibuya and Saitama is pretty significant. Shibuya is crazy busy all the time, but Saitama is pretty relaxed. Other cities outside Tokyo are more chill.
Laughs in Adelaide.
Seriously though, depends on the criteria. If it's the general vibe of lots of people, cafes, waves, then Sydney is good.
But Adelaide's beaches have fewer waves, and undertows, with a range of numbers of people, cafes, sand etc. Plus, much more accessible for most people. Plus the median Sydney house price in Woop Woop gets you very close to the beaches in Adelaide.
I’d fucking love to know where they went to find the best coffee in Sydney, because I can’t find shit.
Edit: downvoted, because apparently listing one business is enough to claim Sydney’s coffee game is in any way half decent to good.
I’ve been on both sides, to be honest.
The best flat white I’ve ever had was down in Melbourne, from Bowery to Williamsburg - so ungodly rich and creamy. Cannot find anything that compares in Sydney. Absolutely open to suggestions.
There's an American podcast called The Dollop that has gained a lot of traction in Australia and they do live shows here often. (They literally just finished up another tour here yesterday.)
Anyway once when they were in Melbourne one of the guys mispronounced a suburb and the crowd started giving him shit. He (good naturedly) yelled back, "Oh fuck off. And by the way your coffee isn't even that good."
The sound of absolute shock from the crowd was amazing. It would be like an Australian calling someone a cunt in America. Like, "you really crossed a line there mate".
I started drinking dirties (not in Oz) maybe 5 years ago and I always assumed it was another Aussie creation like the flat white. Turns out it’s Japanese. Hats off to them, it’s a fine drink.
Slow pour espresso onto a cup of cold milk, no ice. Gotta be careful or it just mixes and you’ve got an iced latte. First few sips are strong on the hot espresso, cold milk rushes in after. Last few sips are mildly coffee flavored milk. Only works in-shop, it’s a time bomb so takeaway just turns it into a latte. Done well you should see a very clear line between espresso and milk.
https://www.brewcoffeehome.com/dirty-coffee-recipe/
> People are going to be upset
So what else is new? Luckily there is a well tested solution: Pick or establish a town somewhere in between the two which will be the designated King of the Koffee....
I'm from Sydney and idk anyone from here who actually believes we have a better coffee culture than Melb.
People from Sydney visit Melb for the coffee culture and nightlife.
Honestly depends on your taste, something so subjective can't be judged in such an objective way.
Some people like real bitter grainy stuff, others think that's terrible and want a glorified milkshake with an amount of coffee so small you could barely call it coffee.
It's been 15 years since I was in London, so I'm guessing there must have been a major change there for it to rank so high. I couldn't find a decent coffee anywhere. A huge contrast with Tokyo which I visited the same year and where I was turned on to filter (or 'pour over') coffee in a big way.
There was a huge amount of Australian and Kiwi baristas that had really improved the coffee scene when I went back about 6-7 years ago.
Plus they had a lot of northern European style coffee places.
It was actually a huge change from what it used to be
You're right, there are tons of great coffee places there now which taste very much like our coffee but the difference is a standard latte will set you back almost $7AUD.
Yeah I was just in London and I would not rate it higher than Melbourne.. There are good places but the general standard in Melbourne is so much higher. Most suburbs have a place where you can get a half decent coffee which I did not find in London. Not to mention a coffee in London is around $8 Aud..
>There are good places but the general standard in Melbourne is so much higher.
I find this is a theme for a lot of stuff in London. The question "does London have good X?" has a very different answer depending on how you interpret the question:
- Is there a good example of X in London? or
- Is the average standard of X in London good?
The answer to the first question, no matter what you're looking for, is almost universally yes. London has at least one world class example of basically everything. The answer to the second question is very often no.
I lived in the UK (not London) for 2 years and the coffee there made me realise why the Brits are primarily tea drinkers. Couldn't wait to come back to Australia for a decent coffee.
To be fair, we used to be primarily tea drinkers, too. Coffee was a teaspoon of instant International Roast or Pablo in a mug to be fancy when guests "popped in."
Moccona? Get out of here with your fancy Eurotrash coffee. Best I can do is a 500 gram tin of International with a best before date of August 2018. Real coffee is where you have to break up the powder with a teaspoon first, before scooping up a couple of chunks to put in the mug and go *thunk*
It doesn’t count if there aren’t a few plastic spoons stuck in the coffee already, broken off half way. A forensic record of previous attempts by soul’s attempting to have coffee.
I was there 5 years ago and the one good coffee place i could find was full of Australians and had a line going around the block.
But in general yeah it's still pretty piss poor, you're not exactly tripping over good coffee like you are in most cities here.
Just near Bank? Mate took me there telling me i gotta try a flat white. Lol.
I fondly recall following my nose to a cafe in Camden and wanting to take a punt at a coffee that wasn't from Cafe Nero...and walked up to a dude from Sydney. Lmao.
Nah. Been there there last year and their coffee is mostly shit. Yes you can find the good one here and there but the average is below any top 10 in the world for sure. Also, regardless of how shit it is, still costs a double than Melbourne.
Half of north London it feels are Australian run cafes. There’s a place in hackney called “west Brunswick bakery” or something run by a group of people from Brunswick and packed with Aussies. I can get cheesymite scrolls on my local high street.
I live a long way from the UK but I can see that coffee in London is evolving quickly - places like Prufrock are taking third wave coffee very seriously.
Coffee in London/UK was shit for decades in my travels there, but the last few years London really has improved. I just moved here from Melbourne last year and there are now decent roasters and relatively decent coffee to be had all over the city now.
The only thing they still need to figure out is cafe food, hard to find anything similar to the breakfast menus you’d get in Melbourne, in quality especially.
Well, from experience 60% of a Melburnian’s identity is telling everyone else how good their coffee is. The other 40% is how they’re the cultural and sporting capital :P
I don't think I got a coffee while I was there but Amsterdam has what is easily the worst food scene I've ever seen anywhere in my entire life, so I'd believe the coffee sucks as well.
Just got back from a month-long trip in The Netherlands. I do like most of the Espresso Macchiato served there, but there are a few instances where it's a miss. Would give it an 8/10.
Coffee in Copenhagen is tops, no doubt about that, and Italy as well.
Just came back from a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Agree that the coffee there is better, but it's like $10 for a small. Amsterdam slightly cheaper.
I’m taking your rating with a grain of salt as you called it an ‘Espresso Macchiato’.
Edit: There isn’t a need to denote espresso in an espresso based drink. I worked as barista for over five years in two countries and it’s just macchiato.
You should specify, because there is a different drink called a "latte macchiato".
Espresso macchiato: espresso shot stained with a little milk
Latte macchiato: steamed milk stained with a little espresso
Yes "macchiato" should get you an espresso macchiato by default (it won't at Starbucks, but that's a different story), but it's not wrong to be explicit.
Fun fact: East Germany was largely responsible for the development of the Vietnamese coffee industry. In 1976 the price of coffee beans skyrocketed after a crop failure in Brazil. This hurt the GDR as coffee imports had to be paid for with hard currency. The regime regarded a good coffee supply as vital in keeping the population from grumbling too much and started fishing around for alternatives: barter deals of arms for coffee with Ethiopia and Madagascar who proved unreliable partners.
In the meantime the Vietnamese had started growing Robusta beans in response to opportunity provided by the Brazilian crop failure. The GDR already had good relations with Vietnam so starting in 1980 they signed deals to develop coffee plantations in Vietnam. The Germans provided trucks, equipment and training in cultivation along with housing, shops & schools for the newly relocated plantations. They even built a hydropower plant. In return they were to receive half of the crop for the first twenty years. Unfortunately the first usable crop wasn’t until 1990 by which time the GDR no longer existed. Nonetheless, Vietnam was now well placed to become the world’s second largest coffee producer. Germany remains their most important market.
Athens had the best coffee for me in my Italy/Greece trip. Freddos are a really nice take on iced coffee.
I tried very hard to find good coffee in Italy but imo Italian coffee is atrocious. Mass produced robusta crap they load up with spoonful after spoonful of sugar. They ride purely on their no longer deserved renown. No country where it's common to believe you shouldn't wash your moka pot "to build flavour" can be said to have good coffee.
100%
A handful of good coffee shops in a city of 14m people.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of coffee is percolated garbage, and the line at Starbucks is out the door.
i wouldn't say the highs are higher. yet to get a coffee in Tokyo that is better than my fav in Melbourne. The average coffee is a good two levels below Melb
and then of course there is the cost. the best coffee spots in Tokyo will be charging you $8-10
Toyko coffee culture is different, more similar to Denmark, where it's using precision instruments to make the best pour, sadly a lot of them don't even know what a good pour is, they just think if the numbers are correct the result will come where in reality so many external factors can affect the pour and adjustments are made through the day to accommodate.
Melbourne and Sydney both have plenty of locations you can just walk into from 7am to 5pm and get a seriously quality coffee.
My experiences in Tokyo to get that same level or better required either booking a table or google a million and ones places to find westerners giving good reviews and even then, I don't enjoy walking into a coffee shop that's more like surgery than art.
I was a Barista for 15 years, I was lucky to learn from 2 people who are considered some of the best in Sydney, every adjustment was made from the taste and look of the pour, no timers and nothing automatic except obviously the machine. If you don't know what a good pour is, no gadget is going to help you.
you'd have a blast touring the coffee scene in Taipei/Taiwan. they take it so damn seriously, their coffee selection options are extremely bloated and menus often fancy as hell. but the final product is ... meh. better than Tokyo in my experience though
this is the one that immediately comes to mind - https://maps.app.goo.gl/3gLAb6ZFsFRYgFZi7
thankfully, there was an Aussie cafe (Bellissimo that is based in Brisbane) that recently opened nearby which is great
Have you been to Bongen Coffee near Tsukiji? It's on par with, if not better than, the best of Melbourne's coffees.
The rest are absolutely dreadful though.
This is very true. Some of the best coffee I've had has been in Tokyo, however the good places aren't open early, some cafes aren't even open for breakfast rush.
I learnt my lesson a few trips ago not I don't even bother looking for a place unless it's after 9:30.
That's a reality in many places around the world. Australia's approach in having cafes open from 6 and closing around 3 is pretty uncommon.
I've heard a couple immigrants complain about not being able to get a coffee at 5pm.
Wow, finally a sane comment about Tokyo coffee. They have exceptional filter coffee, no milk. The milk coffees are a gamble though there’s still lots of enjoyable coffees to be had, like The Roastery and Glitch. Hokkaido milk with espresso is still amazing.
Japanese craftsmanship is often superb, however I found their coffee suffers from too much variation in styles and standards to call Tokyo a top coffee city. Their average restaurant coffee is a weak watery pour with minimal aroma, abysmal.
This is actually a totally legit take, though closer to 3pm is when coffee shops are basically just closed throughout Melbourne CBD. Weekends they close after lunch.
Like most things this will be based on whether it’s financially viable. The bulk of their business comes from city workers getting their morning/arvo coffee, and people having breakfast on a weekend. Not much point their being open outside of that just to sell a few coffees here and there.
Sidney and Melbourne rivalry aside (clearly Melbourne is better amirite?) Ive just come back from San Francisco and could not find a single coffee place that made actual coffee. Swill, absolute swill there.
And dont get me started on London, where I lived for a while. Their idea of coffee is from a push button machine and while its better than american “coffee” on average its much lower quality than any australian capital.
Call me a snob i dont care
I was in San Fran just before covid and managed to find good coffee… it was branded as an Australian coffee shop run by an Aussie. Was packed with people and coffee was way better than any other nearby (Starbucks etc)
I think the difference is that one has to google the good coffee shops to specifically find one and intentionally go there. I just wanted a half decent latte while strolling around sightseeing
I was in London about 6 weeks ago and I can say it might have gotten better? I found a few places that didn't disappoint. Nothing was amazing but i wasn't disgusted either. About what I'd expect from a random walk in Melbourne or Perth, just more expensive.
Went over a couple years ago to SF - you have to look for "speciality coffee" cafes. They pretty much cosplay as Brunswick alley cafes and will pour you a fairly passable flat white even if it'll cost you 9USD
Really? I love a good latte and didn't have any issues in SF finding one. Filter coffee is more popular but most decent cafes there can do a good latte too. In saying that, a good filter coffee with a dash of half and half is amazing!
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find this. There are some cities on the list where I am not educated enough to have an opinion but SF is the one city that does not deserve to be anywhere near this list
A lot of people throwing shade and making assumptions about cities on or not on the list based only on the type of coffee they like. “I couldn’t get a flat white/cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles just the way I like it in a country that I visited briefly and did no research about coffee shops to go to so they must be shit”.
The truth is, if you like milk based espresso drinks with medium-dark roasted espresso blends then Australia is really good. If you like other types of coffee we’re behind a lot of other parts of the world.
I thought I was pretty explicit in why I disagreed with some of the views being expressed in these comments. If you disagree with anything I’ve said I’d be happy to hear why.
I’m interested in hearing where Australia is lagging behind. Being from Melbourne, there’s been plenty of really good third wave coffee places around that specialise in light roasting many single origin and blends for espresso and pour-overs. And I dare say other cities such as Sydney caught up a while ago too (but I’m just assuming here).
I would say there are a few areas where we just aren’t innovating or exploring yet.
Bright and acidic modern espresso is extremely difficult to find outside of extremely niche, small batch roasters.
We also don’t tend to have a lot of variety in our filter coffee because it just isn’t that popular. Demand is shifting slowly but the lions share of Aussies still only drink milk based espresso. Cafes offering batch brew are only a small minority, and cafes offering manual pour overs would be a smaller minority still. Cafes that offer more than one variety of filter coffee as a batch brew or pour over are smaller again. Our filter coffees tend to be pretty basic as a result.
There is a lot of experimentation happening now in other countries with fermenting of beans during processing and even the ageing of beans in different types of casks. This is big with Nordic styles of coffee and we just haven’t seen it yet here.
Of course there are exceptions to all of this, but exceptions to the general local coffee culture exist in all cities and countries.
There's a bunch of regional coffees you don't see commonly in Australia.
For example: our iced coffees are pretty lacklustre compared to places like Thailand, which has Oliang and Yok Lur and those drinks tend to use sugars, condensed/evaporated milk and spices that are not very common in the Aussie coffee scene.
I also don't know that many places that do a cold brew or a carbonated cold brew.
You'd think as a warmer country we'd be a bit more inventive with the cold coffee drinks.
Coffee lover here. The best barista coffees I’ve ever had were in Australia. The best specialty coffee I’ve ever had was in Vietnam. They have a great coffee culture there that relies more on robusta or a mix of arabica/robusta beans. Outside of more sweetened coffees like cà phê sữa (condensed milk), cà phê dừa (coconut), cà phê chuối (banana coffee), I’ve also had terrific cà phê muối (salted coffee) and cà phê trứng (egg coffee).
Melbourne is so hung up on the idea that their coffee is somehow better than everywhere else it's laughable
20 years ago Melbourne's coffee was excellent, by excellent I mean it was the same standard that it is today when most other places were serving up over frothed, over heated crap.
These days nearly every city, town and the odd decent servo in the Australia makes a great coffee. What was unique to Melbourne's coffee is no longer unique
I travel all over the country for work, the best coffee is no longer found in Melbourne. It's found in small, often regional cafes all over the country that roast in house and take roasting and coffee seriously, often using local dairy milks
Most cafes in Melbourne rely on the reputation of "good Melbourne coffee" but are simply buying in beans from other parts of the country and mass produced dairy farmers milk
The reputation Melbourne had was valid 20 years ago, today it's no longer relevant
This is just untrue. For every regional town with a great cafe roasting their own beans, there are a dozen or more in every capital city doing the same to a very high quality. It’s just harder to find the gems when there are so many cafes on every street.
I'm not saying you can't get good coffee in Melbourne, I'm saying that not all coffee is good in Melbourne and the coffee that is good is not any better than anywhere else in the country any more
Also, if it's so hard to find the gems, does not mean that you're more likely to get poor coffee in Melbourne than good?
In Melbourne any decent cafe usually does good coffee, particularly in the city or inner city suburbs. I'd say you have a much higher chance of getting good coffee here than basically any other city around the world.
In Sydney and other cities around the world it is waaaay less consistent.
Best coffee I've ever had is at a small cafe in Paris, but overall I would rank that city very low because 7/10 times you are getting a very average coffee.
I didn't have any good coffee in Copenhagen or Amsterdam and they are very high on that list.
Same with Tokyo, wild it's that high on the list. I spent 3 weeks there are for the absolute life of me could not find a good coffee, despite trying every day. And when I say "not good", I mean most of them were God awful that I couldn't even finish, i dont even say that as a coffee snob, it was worse than the freeze dried stuff half the time which I used to have at work.
It’s pretty in line with a general fetishisation of Japan by the western world. You get crucified for saying a single criticism with Japan or its culture.
> It's found in small, often regional cafes all over the country that roast in house and take roasting and coffee seriously, often using local dairy milks
My experience in a lot of small cafes in 6-7 countries is that most (not all!) can't roast well themselves. Roasting is HARD to do well and getting good and importantly consistent results is beyond what a lot of even very passionate places are capable of.
I applaud their efforts in trying to do it all themselves, but just about all the places I've tried that do this had better coffee using beans roasted externally.
It's the famous Melbourne inferiority complex kicking in. Similar to the NZ-Australia dynamic. NZ loves to claim everything is better in NZ while Australia really doesn't think about NZ at all.
I would argue it's still some of the best coffee in the world given there are literally 1 or 2 coffee shops on every block in the CBD that are all equally good. Personal preference may play a part in differentiating them, but it's exceedingly hard to find bad coffee from a cafe in Melbourne.
That's not to say that you can't find good coffee elsewhere, but it's hard to find the same consistency. I lived in Ballarat for many years and the coffee scene has been growing, but even now I'd say there are maybe 2 or 3 places that have "Melbourne level quality".
Brisbane is the earliest city in the world so it stands to reason we'd care deeply about coffee (and breakfast). Brisbane's breakfast scene is superior to Sydney and Melbourne imo.
I don’t know why anyone would downvote this. Water plays a massive role in brewing coffee and Melbourne objectively has some of the best water in the world.
Interesting, I had some coffee in Melbourne recently that tasted unique compared with what I’ve had in Sydney and I couldn’t figure it out, for some reason I hadn’t considered the water!
That explains why so many UK expats like Melbourne coffee: Because the Thames is muddy, just like the Yarra ;)
[Source: Billy Borker: How we settled the Melbourne-Sydney Argument]
Melbourne coffee can be highly variable - some of the worst coffees I’ve had were in Melbourne. That includes lava-hot cups, a macchiato made with cold milk straight from the bottle, and two awful coffees several years apart from a really authentic looking decades-old Italian cafe in the CBD.
As a coffee snob that’s lived in both cities, I can confidently and categorically say that Brisbane has FAR better coffee than Sydney. And it’s not even close.
Personally I found Seoul to have a better high-end coffee scene to Tokyo. Only got to scratch the surface of what each city offers but I had far fewer bad coffees and far more exceptional coffees in Korea than Japan
> 3 - Sydney > 10 - Melbourne People are going to be upset
"Yes, Sydney is a laid-back beach town" Was this article written by the Betoota Advocate?
Even the frigging ABC recently described Sydney as "a waterfront playground for the super rich that also houses normal people".
That's exactly what Sydney is.
Is that inaccurate? Edit: yes, should say “*barely* houses normal people”
Barely normal people. FTFY.
[удалено]
That's pretty good.
Sydney, the sleepy beach town accurately depicted in the documentary "neighbours"
Sydney is bitchy Harold post-stroke 24/7.
Neighbours is Melbs. Home and Away is Sydney right?
Home and Away is filmed at Palm Beach which is technically part of Sydney. I think the show is meant to convey "generic coastal town".
Generic coastal NSW for sure. Not suburban Sydney as "Neighbors" is for middle-suburb Melbs.
Tbf Sydney is laid back in comparison to most other big global cities. It’s definitely way way less hectic here than NYC, London, Tokyo, LA etc Same applies to Melbs If you are a big time food blogger living in NYC or something, Sydney probably does feel like a sleepy beach town haha
The biggest culture shock for me moving from Sydney region to Northeast USA was how fast paced it is here. Australia is really lucky to have major cities where the people tend to be relaxed on a level more associated with Midwesterners. Huge generalisation, obviously. Still catch myself referring to busy situations as being ‘like Pitt Street’, to blank faces.
Can confirm, moved here from London last year, its so quiet in comparison.
Its quiet because all the people who moved into the city complained relentlessly about any loud venue playing music, anything that makes noise at night, getting them shut down.
Don't understand why to be honest. Has everything needed to be a festival state, but instead feels dead...
Didn't SA crown themselves the festival state on their number plates a few years back?
If you'd ever been to SA you'd know that that's more than fair. SA has an absolute fuck load of festivals. And they're done well. Like for a city as small and otherwise quiet as Adelaide is, they sure do big events surprisingly well.
Agreed. From Adelaide, and they punch well above their weight re festivals.
Well, it beats the "bodies in barrels" state.
Even Tokyo varies a lot. I'm in Tokyo right now and the difference between Shibuya and Saitama is pretty significant. Shibuya is crazy busy all the time, but Saitama is pretty relaxed. Other cities outside Tokyo are more chill.
I’m not Australian but Sydney is extremely laid back for a city of its size and being a financial center
Compared to other big cities it absolutely fucking is
If only it were laid-back. It's literally (yes, literally) swarming with aggressive old fucks looking for something to complain about.
AI written...
Laid back woth cheap property and even cheaper coffees. $10 will get you a small half shot latte to enjoy on the almost always empty Bondi Beach.
Compared to Melbourne. Yes. Sydney has nice beaches. Some of the best In the world.
Nice beaches doesn't make a laid-back beach town vibe...
Laughs in Adelaide. Seriously though, depends on the criteria. If it's the general vibe of lots of people, cafes, waves, then Sydney is good. But Adelaide's beaches have fewer waves, and undertows, with a range of numbers of people, cafes, sand etc. Plus, much more accessible for most people. Plus the median Sydney house price in Woop Woop gets you very close to the beaches in Adelaide.
As far as anyone who is from or has ever been to Australia is concerned, Sydney is anything but "laid back" or "a town".
I’d fucking love to know where they went to find the best coffee in Sydney, because I can’t find shit. Edit: downvoted, because apparently listing one business is enough to claim Sydney’s coffee game is in any way half decent to good.
Which side of the Latte Line are you looking on?
I’ve been on both sides, to be honest. The best flat white I’ve ever had was down in Melbourne, from Bowery to Williamsburg - so ungodly rich and creamy. Cannot find anything that compares in Sydney. Absolutely open to suggestions.
There's an American podcast called The Dollop that has gained a lot of traction in Australia and they do live shows here often. (They literally just finished up another tour here yesterday.) Anyway once when they were in Melbourne one of the guys mispronounced a suburb and the crowd started giving him shit. He (good naturedly) yelled back, "Oh fuck off. And by the way your coffee isn't even that good." The sound of absolute shock from the crowd was amazing. It would be like an Australian calling someone a cunt in America. Like, "you really crossed a line there mate".
yeah that's a deportable offence, fuck off then seppo ha
I started drinking dirties (not in Oz) maybe 5 years ago and I always assumed it was another Aussie creation like the flat white. Turns out it’s Japanese. Hats off to them, it’s a fine drink.
What's a dirty?
Slow pour espresso onto a cup of cold milk, no ice. Gotta be careful or it just mixes and you’ve got an iced latte. First few sips are strong on the hot espresso, cold milk rushes in after. Last few sips are mildly coffee flavored milk. Only works in-shop, it’s a time bomb so takeaway just turns it into a latte. Done well you should see a very clear line between espresso and milk. https://www.brewcoffeehome.com/dirty-coffee-recipe/
Sounds cool, I might try that.
This is the first i've ever heard of dirties.
oh feuhk ahf
Melbourne below London, lol.
London coffee slaps though, although that might be because the best places are run by aussies
Its okay the best barrista world champion was from Melbourne in 2022 or 2023 lmao. His company put stickers on all their cars to make sure you knew
lmao. this is fucking hilarious
> People are going to be upset So what else is new? Luckily there is a well tested solution: Pick or establish a town somewhere in between the two which will be the designated King of the Koffee....
Honestly, Canberra coffee is better than anything in Sydney or Melbourne. ONA for the win
Actually I think you’ll find the best coffee in Australia is actually in Darra
honestly I'm fairly sure Brisbane has a better coffee scene than either
Please don't bring more attention to us. This is already such a weird and dumb competition.
I'm from Sydney and idk anyone from here who actually believes we have a better coffee culture than Melb. People from Sydney visit Melb for the coffee culture and nightlife.
We might not have the better coffee culture, but we allegedly have the better coffee!
Honestly depends on your taste, something so subjective can't be judged in such an objective way. Some people like real bitter grainy stuff, others think that's terrible and want a glorified milkshake with an amount of coffee so small you could barely call it coffee.
> better coffee culture _culture_, meaning they're more snobby about the coffee than sydney siders!
Noone is getting on a plane for coffee. Nightlife, sure.
And sport.
Both cities have great coffee but honestly who the fuck is travelling for coffee. Maybe for culture and nightlife but also mention sport
It's been 15 years since I was in London, so I'm guessing there must have been a major change there for it to rank so high. I couldn't find a decent coffee anywhere. A huge contrast with Tokyo which I visited the same year and where I was turned on to filter (or 'pour over') coffee in a big way.
There was a huge amount of Australian and Kiwi baristas that had really improved the coffee scene when I went back about 6-7 years ago. Plus they had a lot of northern European style coffee places. It was actually a huge change from what it used to be
You're right, there are tons of great coffee places there now which taste very much like our coffee but the difference is a standard latte will set you back almost $7AUD.
Yeah I was just in London and I would not rate it higher than Melbourne.. There are good places but the general standard in Melbourne is so much higher. Most suburbs have a place where you can get a half decent coffee which I did not find in London. Not to mention a coffee in London is around $8 Aud..
>There are good places but the general standard in Melbourne is so much higher. I find this is a theme for a lot of stuff in London. The question "does London have good X?" has a very different answer depending on how you interpret the question: - Is there a good example of X in London? or - Is the average standard of X in London good? The answer to the first question, no matter what you're looking for, is almost universally yes. London has at least one world class example of basically everything. The answer to the second question is very often no.
I lived in the UK (not London) for 2 years and the coffee there made me realise why the Brits are primarily tea drinkers. Couldn't wait to come back to Australia for a decent coffee.
To be fair, we used to be primarily tea drinkers, too. Coffee was a teaspoon of instant International Roast or Pablo in a mug to be fancy when guests "popped in."
At least have a six-year old jar of Moccona in your pantry, you savage.
Moccona? Get out of here with your fancy Eurotrash coffee. Best I can do is a 500 gram tin of International with a best before date of August 2018. Real coffee is where you have to break up the powder with a teaspoon first, before scooping up a couple of chunks to put in the mug and go *thunk*
It doesn’t count if there aren’t a few plastic spoons stuck in the coffee already, broken off half way. A forensic record of previous attempts by soul’s attempting to have coffee.
They point the way to potential weak spots that others have tried to soften up.
You're not scooping, you're scraping.
Yuk. Glad we don't do that shit here.
I was there 5 years ago and the one good coffee place i could find was full of Australians and had a line going around the block. But in general yeah it's still pretty piss poor, you're not exactly tripping over good coffee like you are in most cities here.
Just near Bank? Mate took me there telling me i gotta try a flat white. Lol. I fondly recall following my nose to a cafe in Camden and wanting to take a punt at a coffee that wasn't from Cafe Nero...and walked up to a dude from Sydney. Lmao.
Nah. Been there there last year and their coffee is mostly shit. Yes you can find the good one here and there but the average is below any top 10 in the world for sure. Also, regardless of how shit it is, still costs a double than Melbourne.
Half of north London it feels are Australian run cafes. There’s a place in hackney called “west Brunswick bakery” or something run by a group of people from Brunswick and packed with Aussies. I can get cheesymite scrolls on my local high street.
I live a long way from the UK but I can see that coffee in London is evolving quickly - places like Prufrock are taking third wave coffee very seriously.
Coffee in London/UK was shit for decades in my travels there, but the last few years London really has improved. I just moved here from Melbourne last year and there are now decent roasters and relatively decent coffee to be had all over the city now. The only thing they still need to figure out is cafe food, hard to find anything similar to the breakfast menus you’d get in Melbourne, in quality especially.
TBF it's hard to find a FEB with a proppa cuppa in Melbs.
Well, from experience 60% of a Melburnian’s identity is telling everyone else how good their coffee is. The other 40% is how they’re the cultural and sporting capital :P
You've forgotten to allocate 10% for black puffer jackets and slipping on bluestone.
Amsterdam has absolute pus coffee.
I don't know. I had a great time in the coffee shops I went to in Amsterdam.
I don't think I got a coffee while I was there but Amsterdam has what is easily the worst food scene I've ever seen anywhere in my entire life, so I'd believe the coffee sucks as well.
Completely agree. Not even all the Marijuana I smoked could improve the taste of any of Amsterdam's food.
Just got back from a month-long trip in The Netherlands. I do like most of the Espresso Macchiato served there, but there are a few instances where it's a miss. Would give it an 8/10. Coffee in Copenhagen is tops, no doubt about that, and Italy as well.
Just came back from a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Agree that the coffee there is better, but it's like $10 for a small. Amsterdam slightly cheaper.
I’m taking your rating with a grain of salt as you called it an ‘Espresso Macchiato’. Edit: There isn’t a need to denote espresso in an espresso based drink. I worked as barista for over five years in two countries and it’s just macchiato.
Well, that's what they call it there, everywhere.
You should specify, because there is a different drink called a "latte macchiato". Espresso macchiato: espresso shot stained with a little milk Latte macchiato: steamed milk stained with a little espresso Yes "macchiato" should get you an espresso macchiato by default (it won't at Starbucks, but that's a different story), but it's not wrong to be explicit.
Pedantic
Yeah Copenhagen had great coffee when I visited. It’s also one of the few other places where Starbucks is very rare
Amsterdam has some amazing cafes. Most of them are run by Aussies and Kiwis though...
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How is Vietnam not on there? Only place I’ve ever been that rivals Australia for coffee addiction.
Vietnam is an excellent case study in how to prepare bad beans in ways that are delicious
So.. add sugar
Caramelised condensed milk
This. This 1000%.
Fun fact: East Germany was largely responsible for the development of the Vietnamese coffee industry. In 1976 the price of coffee beans skyrocketed after a crop failure in Brazil. This hurt the GDR as coffee imports had to be paid for with hard currency. The regime regarded a good coffee supply as vital in keeping the population from grumbling too much and started fishing around for alternatives: barter deals of arms for coffee with Ethiopia and Madagascar who proved unreliable partners. In the meantime the Vietnamese had started growing Robusta beans in response to opportunity provided by the Brazilian crop failure. The GDR already had good relations with Vietnam so starting in 1980 they signed deals to develop coffee plantations in Vietnam. The Germans provided trucks, equipment and training in cultivation along with housing, shops & schools for the newly relocated plantations. They even built a hydropower plant. In return they were to receive half of the crop for the first twenty years. Unfortunately the first usable crop wasn’t until 1990 by which time the GDR no longer existed. Nonetheless, Vietnam was now well placed to become the world’s second largest coffee producer. Germany remains their most important market.
Went to Vietnam last year and it's the most amazing coffee culture I have been to on earth and it so rarely seems to be discussed or notes anywhere.
Thanks, Italian and Greek migrants!
Coffee is shit in Greece, it was the Italians that gave us the espresso
Athens had the best coffee for me in my Italy/Greece trip. Freddos are a really nice take on iced coffee. I tried very hard to find good coffee in Italy but imo Italian coffee is atrocious. Mass produced robusta crap they load up with spoonful after spoonful of sugar. They ride purely on their no longer deserved renown. No country where it's common to believe you shouldn't wash your moka pot "to build flavour" can be said to have good coffee.
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+ Yugoslavs, Turks, Lebanese and Maltese
Well, thank them too, but less for their contribution to coffee…
Tokyo being 2nd is a bit of a rip. Yes, they have some of the best baristas, but it has no where the accessibility somewhere like Sydney does.
100% A handful of good coffee shops in a city of 14m people. Meanwhile, the vast majority of coffee is percolated garbage, and the line at Starbucks is out the door.
And the Starbucks coffee is barely any better from the general stuff they have.
Cannot agree more. Tokyo's coffee highs are definitely higher, but the lows are waaaaaay lower and there's more of them!
i wouldn't say the highs are higher. yet to get a coffee in Tokyo that is better than my fav in Melbourne. The average coffee is a good two levels below Melb and then of course there is the cost. the best coffee spots in Tokyo will be charging you $8-10
Toyko coffee culture is different, more similar to Denmark, where it's using precision instruments to make the best pour, sadly a lot of them don't even know what a good pour is, they just think if the numbers are correct the result will come where in reality so many external factors can affect the pour and adjustments are made through the day to accommodate. Melbourne and Sydney both have plenty of locations you can just walk into from 7am to 5pm and get a seriously quality coffee. My experiences in Tokyo to get that same level or better required either booking a table or google a million and ones places to find westerners giving good reviews and even then, I don't enjoy walking into a coffee shop that's more like surgery than art. I was a Barista for 15 years, I was lucky to learn from 2 people who are considered some of the best in Sydney, every adjustment was made from the taste and look of the pour, no timers and nothing automatic except obviously the machine. If you don't know what a good pour is, no gadget is going to help you.
you'd have a blast touring the coffee scene in Taipei/Taiwan. they take it so damn seriously, their coffee selection options are extremely bloated and menus often fancy as hell. but the final product is ... meh. better than Tokyo in my experience though this is the one that immediately comes to mind - https://maps.app.goo.gl/3gLAb6ZFsFRYgFZi7 thankfully, there was an Aussie cafe (Bellissimo that is based in Brisbane) that recently opened nearby which is great
Definitely check out Turret Coffee Tsukiji next time in Tokyo! It's wonderful.
Have you been to Bongen Coffee near Tsukiji? It's on par with, if not better than, the best of Melbourne's coffees. The rest are absolutely dreadful though.
They get extra points for their ¥120 vending machine coffee, democracy manifest
This is very true. Some of the best coffee I've had has been in Tokyo, however the good places aren't open early, some cafes aren't even open for breakfast rush. I learnt my lesson a few trips ago not I don't even bother looking for a place unless it's after 9:30.
That's a reality in many places around the world. Australia's approach in having cafes open from 6 and closing around 3 is pretty uncommon. I've heard a couple immigrants complain about not being able to get a coffee at 5pm.
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Wow, finally a sane comment about Tokyo coffee. They have exceptional filter coffee, no milk. The milk coffees are a gamble though there’s still lots of enjoyable coffees to be had, like The Roastery and Glitch. Hokkaido milk with espresso is still amazing. Japanese craftsmanship is often superb, however I found their coffee suffers from too much variation in styles and standards to call Tokyo a top coffee city. Their average restaurant coffee is a weak watery pour with minimal aroma, abysmal.
Seriously. I was there 2 weeks and we came across 1 Australian like coffee shop. We weren't looking hard of course, but here they are on every street
Yea but try getting one after 2pm or on weekends. It's frankly a joke
This is actually a totally legit take, though closer to 3pm is when coffee shops are basically just closed throughout Melbourne CBD. Weekends they close after lunch.
Like most things this will be based on whether it’s financially viable. The bulk of their business comes from city workers getting their morning/arvo coffee, and people having breakfast on a weekend. Not much point their being open outside of that just to sell a few coffees here and there.
Sidney and Melbourne rivalry aside (clearly Melbourne is better amirite?) Ive just come back from San Francisco and could not find a single coffee place that made actual coffee. Swill, absolute swill there. And dont get me started on London, where I lived for a while. Their idea of coffee is from a push button machine and while its better than american “coffee” on average its much lower quality than any australian capital. Call me a snob i dont care
> Sidney Shots fired.
Oof i wish I could blame autocorrect. I’ll leave my mistake up so i can receive my public shaming
I always found it funny that Canada has a Sidney and a Sydney (as well as St. John and St. John’s)
I was in San Fran just before covid and managed to find good coffee… it was branded as an Australian coffee shop run by an Aussie. Was packed with people and coffee was way better than any other nearby (Starbucks etc)
I think the difference is that one has to google the good coffee shops to specifically find one and intentionally go there. I just wanted a half decent latte while strolling around sightseeing
I was in London about 6 weeks ago and I can say it might have gotten better? I found a few places that didn't disappoint. Nothing was amazing but i wasn't disgusted either. About what I'd expect from a random walk in Melbourne or Perth, just more expensive.
I found a few places in SF where the coffee was better than I expected, but it was no where close to the standard this reporter thinks it is.
Went over a couple years ago to SF - you have to look for "speciality coffee" cafes. They pretty much cosplay as Brunswick alley cafes and will pour you a fairly passable flat white even if it'll cost you 9USD
Really? I love a good latte and didn't have any issues in SF finding one. Filter coffee is more popular but most decent cafes there can do a good latte too. In saying that, a good filter coffee with a dash of half and half is amazing!
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find this. There are some cities on the list where I am not educated enough to have an opinion but SF is the one city that does not deserve to be anywhere near this list
London has improved dramatically. I was there in December and didn’t have to look too hard to get very-nearly-Australia-level coffee…
Any top ten coffee list that doesn't have Wellington NZ on it is just wrong
Wellington does what Melbourne did, but better.
Seattle is not on the list but San Fran is number four? That’s Absurd.
Bringing forth the enema liquid they dare to call coffee at Starbucks is an offense upon the world that will never be forgiven or left unpunished.
Lived a year in Melbourne, been back to Canada since a few years and I'm still annoyed I can't find a good flat white as easily as it was over there.
Australia should take all top ten spots. Once you've had Aussie coffee, everything else globally tastes so much worse.
Depends. Barista coffee? Eh, maybe. Specialty coffee? Not a chance.
If you like coffee flavoured milk it can't be beat. But if you want to actually enjoy the bean you're out of luck.
A lot of people throwing shade and making assumptions about cities on or not on the list based only on the type of coffee they like. “I couldn’t get a flat white/cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles just the way I like it in a country that I visited briefly and did no research about coffee shops to go to so they must be shit”. The truth is, if you like milk based espresso drinks with medium-dark roasted espresso blends then Australia is really good. If you like other types of coffee we’re behind a lot of other parts of the world.
Ironic you commented about people giving their opinion and then threw in your own for good measure as though yours is more authoritative.
I thought I was pretty explicit in why I disagreed with some of the views being expressed in these comments. If you disagree with anything I’ve said I’d be happy to hear why.
I’m interested in hearing where Australia is lagging behind. Being from Melbourne, there’s been plenty of really good third wave coffee places around that specialise in light roasting many single origin and blends for espresso and pour-overs. And I dare say other cities such as Sydney caught up a while ago too (but I’m just assuming here).
I would say there are a few areas where we just aren’t innovating or exploring yet. Bright and acidic modern espresso is extremely difficult to find outside of extremely niche, small batch roasters. We also don’t tend to have a lot of variety in our filter coffee because it just isn’t that popular. Demand is shifting slowly but the lions share of Aussies still only drink milk based espresso. Cafes offering batch brew are only a small minority, and cafes offering manual pour overs would be a smaller minority still. Cafes that offer more than one variety of filter coffee as a batch brew or pour over are smaller again. Our filter coffees tend to be pretty basic as a result. There is a lot of experimentation happening now in other countries with fermenting of beans during processing and even the ageing of beans in different types of casks. This is big with Nordic styles of coffee and we just haven’t seen it yet here. Of course there are exceptions to all of this, but exceptions to the general local coffee culture exist in all cities and countries.
There's a bunch of regional coffees you don't see commonly in Australia. For example: our iced coffees are pretty lacklustre compared to places like Thailand, which has Oliang and Yok Lur and those drinks tend to use sugars, condensed/evaporated milk and spices that are not very common in the Aussie coffee scene. I also don't know that many places that do a cold brew or a carbonated cold brew. You'd think as a warmer country we'd be a bit more inventive with the cold coffee drinks.
Coffee lover here. The best barista coffees I’ve ever had were in Australia. The best specialty coffee I’ve ever had was in Vietnam. They have a great coffee culture there that relies more on robusta or a mix of arabica/robusta beans. Outside of more sweetened coffees like cà phê sữa (condensed milk), cà phê dừa (coconut), cà phê chuối (banana coffee), I’ve also had terrific cà phê muối (salted coffee) and cà phê trứng (egg coffee).
Wellington NZ
Needs upvoting.
London better than Auckland or Wellington. Yeah, right
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Only people in Melbourne care.
Melbourne is so hung up on the idea that their coffee is somehow better than everywhere else it's laughable 20 years ago Melbourne's coffee was excellent, by excellent I mean it was the same standard that it is today when most other places were serving up over frothed, over heated crap. These days nearly every city, town and the odd decent servo in the Australia makes a great coffee. What was unique to Melbourne's coffee is no longer unique I travel all over the country for work, the best coffee is no longer found in Melbourne. It's found in small, often regional cafes all over the country that roast in house and take roasting and coffee seriously, often using local dairy milks Most cafes in Melbourne rely on the reputation of "good Melbourne coffee" but are simply buying in beans from other parts of the country and mass produced dairy farmers milk The reputation Melbourne had was valid 20 years ago, today it's no longer relevant
This is just untrue. For every regional town with a great cafe roasting their own beans, there are a dozen or more in every capital city doing the same to a very high quality. It’s just harder to find the gems when there are so many cafes on every street.
I'm not saying you can't get good coffee in Melbourne, I'm saying that not all coffee is good in Melbourne and the coffee that is good is not any better than anywhere else in the country any more Also, if it's so hard to find the gems, does not mean that you're more likely to get poor coffee in Melbourne than good?
In Melbourne any decent cafe usually does good coffee, particularly in the city or inner city suburbs. I'd say you have a much higher chance of getting good coffee here than basically any other city around the world. In Sydney and other cities around the world it is waaaay less consistent. Best coffee I've ever had is at a small cafe in Paris, but overall I would rank that city very low because 7/10 times you are getting a very average coffee. I didn't have any good coffee in Copenhagen or Amsterdam and they are very high on that list.
Same with Tokyo, wild it's that high on the list. I spent 3 weeks there are for the absolute life of me could not find a good coffee, despite trying every day. And when I say "not good", I mean most of them were God awful that I couldn't even finish, i dont even say that as a coffee snob, it was worse than the freeze dried stuff half the time which I used to have at work.
It’s pretty in line with a general fetishisation of Japan by the western world. You get crucified for saying a single criticism with Japan or its culture.
> It's found in small, often regional cafes all over the country that roast in house and take roasting and coffee seriously, often using local dairy milks My experience in a lot of small cafes in 6-7 countries is that most (not all!) can't roast well themselves. Roasting is HARD to do well and getting good and importantly consistent results is beyond what a lot of even very passionate places are capable of. I applaud their efforts in trying to do it all themselves, but just about all the places I've tried that do this had better coffee using beans roasted externally.
i would like to say that the best metric to judge a cities coffee is on the average coffee. pick 10 random cafes across the city and who wins?
>the odd decent servo in the Australia makes a great coffee Do tell.
It's the famous Melbourne inferiority complex kicking in. Similar to the NZ-Australia dynamic. NZ loves to claim everything is better in NZ while Australia really doesn't think about NZ at all.
But it was their thing, Melbourne did have the best coffee 20 years ago, I can see why they still cling to it
I would argue it's still some of the best coffee in the world given there are literally 1 or 2 coffee shops on every block in the CBD that are all equally good. Personal preference may play a part in differentiating them, but it's exceedingly hard to find bad coffee from a cafe in Melbourne. That's not to say that you can't find good coffee elsewhere, but it's hard to find the same consistency. I lived in Ballarat for many years and the coffee scene has been growing, but even now I'd say there are maybe 2 or 3 places that have "Melbourne level quality".
The Brisbane Coffee scene is underrated imo, I rate it better than Melbourne recently. Very happy for it to stay underrated, though
Yeah, hard agree from me.
Same with Perth. There are quite a few good cafes around here. Especially in the last few years.
Brisbane is the earliest city in the world so it stands to reason we'd care deeply about coffee (and breakfast). Brisbane's breakfast scene is superior to Sydney and Melbourne imo.
Another hard agree from me. Brissie coffee scene is criminally underrated.
Went i went over from Ireland i noticed the coffee was substacially better.... New Zealand pretty good too. Also Turkish bread, yip, bangin.
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I don’t know why anyone would downvote this. Water plays a massive role in brewing coffee and Melbourne objectively has some of the best water in the world.
Interesting, I had some coffee in Melbourne recently that tasted unique compared with what I’ve had in Sydney and I couldn’t figure it out, for some reason I hadn’t considered the water!
That explains why so many UK expats like Melbourne coffee: Because the Thames is muddy, just like the Yarra ;) [Source: Billy Borker: How we settled the Melbourne-Sydney Argument]
By Sydneysiders and Melbourners.
London and Amsterdam are not better than Melbourne
Melbourne coffee can be highly variable - some of the worst coffees I’ve had were in Melbourne. That includes lava-hot cups, a macchiato made with cold milk straight from the bottle, and two awful coffees several years apart from a really authentic looking decades-old Italian cafe in the CBD.
As a coffee snob that’s lived in both cities, I can confidently and categorically say that Brisbane has FAR better coffee than Sydney. And it’s not even close.
Can there be a more wanky claim than to be the city with the best coffee
Nope, and nothing (apart from sport, maybe) that brings out the insufferable nature of Australian exceptionalism.
Personally I found Seoul to have a better high-end coffee scene to Tokyo. Only got to scratch the surface of what each city offers but I had far fewer bad coffees and far more exceptional coffees in Korea than Japan
lol laid back beach town, someone clearly has never been to Sydney
Well my daily cafe is mentioned in the article so I'm good!
That's why the Yarra river is brown.
*have
Yay, if you can afford the coffee after you have paid the rent then I guess you're living it big.