Coffee

Aussies do coffee, and they do it right. They’ve had a well established coffee culture for ages, and when Starbucks decided to expand their enterprise and enlighten Aussies, they were basically shut down. Today there’s just a handful of Starbucks trying to hang on in the major metropolitan areas (I’ve never actually seen one). In fact, the Aussies who have been elsewhere and experienced Starbucks coffee cannot understand why it’s so popular – they think it’s crap.

And you have to know a whole new set of terms to order coffee, here. You never just order a coffee – your choices include: short black, long black, flat white, macchiato, cappucino ... among others (if you click on the title of this entry it takes you to an Australian espressopedia).

Ben and I are flat white drinkers.

Now, this may seem to fly in the face of all the coffee-snobbery discussed above, but when Aussies make a cuppa for themselves, they often use instant coffee. Some people might use a French press with real coffee, but percolating coffee machines are almost unheard of. (Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition.) In fact, they are appalled when they see US shows where people grab a cup of coffee from a percolator pot, which may have been sitting there for hours. Apparently Australians are the highest consumers of instant coffee in the world - betcha were wondering.