FAMOUS FOR BEAN FAMOUS

Turns out Melbourne's reputation for being a coffee city is undeserved. Well, it is according to the The Drum's James Panichi, who reckons Melbourne's coffee is disgusting:

Bad coffee gets a bashing

Here's something you'll never see in writing. In fact, so deep and dark is the conspiracy to keep a lid on this that I may well be signing my death-warrant.

Here goes: why is Melbourne's coffee so bad? I mean, seriously. It goes from the disgustingly bad variety served in the cafes of Lygon Street's Little Italy to the gut-wrenching, undrinkably bad at Melbourne Airport. And this isn't 'bad' as in 'good'. Sometimes bad is just bad, and the stuff being served by this city's poncy baristas is really bad.

Au contraire. You'll see it in writing right here. I don't drink much coffee, maybe one a day, but I always thought that was because coffee in general tastes vile, not just Melbourne coffee. I've only ever had one coffee that I thought "tasted divine," as coffee wankers say, and that was in Berlin.

Comments

[Tony]

If you want evoke a look of disdain from a pretentious coffee poonce, thus confirming your own disdainful opinion of them, ask for tea.

[Tony]

Of course, your opinion will already have been confirmed when he walked in with his t-shirt over his wind-cheater.

[Tony]

The tuft of hair under his bottom lip will also confirm his poonceness.

[Tony]

The way he says "Let's go for a coffee," too. That's a dead give-away; especially the strange emphasis on the coff.

[Simon]

Probably talks a lot to himself about coffee - pontificating and posturing.

[Jim]

Are you suggesting that the genuine article coffee connaisseur puts the emphasis on the "fee" or, worse, the gorgeously glottaly-stopped "ee"? I'd like to hear that...

[Jim]

hmm, would have read better without typo in the neologism. "glotally"

[Big Ramifications]

Farking testify. I drink it for the high, and thus I have it short and black and [hopefully] strong. Then I get it down my neck with as little fuss as possible.

Normally it's too hot to skol, so I don't look like the total Philistine.

[A coffee bogged up with chocolate and frothy milk doesn't taste too bad, I suppose.]

[TimT]

Wot's he expect? Coffee as is sold nowadays is just hot water, coffee grounds, and fancy froth. You can only do so much to that to differentiate yourself from other coffee vendors right around the country.

[TimT]

Hmmm. So apparently they serve good coffee in Berlin and in some Italian airport.

I've had New Zealand coffee and American coffee. The NZ is just like ours, but the American stuff is petrol for humans. Often tapped out of a giant vat, and you're given a sachet of milk to pour in yourself. Bizarrely, they often serve it in the morning with a glass of orange juice, and I can't think of two drinks in the world that compliment one another less.

[Carrot]

Having lived in the Netherlands for a year and a half now, there are a couple of things that have made me consider whether I could live here permenantly or not. One is the food, the other is the coffee. I think I could handle one on a reasonably long-term basis, but not both.

All coffee in the Netherlands comes out of a machine. And I don't mean a put the coffee grounds in, twist the lever thingy, heat the milk with the nozzle doohicky that makes the frothy noise type machine either - I mean a press-the-button, produce digusting, watery, bland, in keeping with the worst sort of vending machine FILTH that I wouldn't serve my worst enemy to type machine. This is what you'll find in most cafes and restaurants, I kid you not - AND it's expensive. Consider yourselves lucky down there in Texas that your coffee is more often than not actually made in something approaching the "right" manner.

I'm with Tim on American coffee though - although at least there they have the occasional Starbucks which whilst far from being perfect is better than nothing - and it's pretty easy to get a decent feed.

[Big Ramifications]

I don't need The Drum's James Panichi to tell me how good my coffee is.

I'm the one who buys it, I know how fuckin' good it is. When Bonnie goes shopping she buys shit. I buy the gourmet expensive stuff coz when I drink it I wanna taste it.

But what's on my mind at this moment isn't the coffee in Melbourne, it's the

[Professor Rosseforp]

I'm not bothered about who thinks what about which coffee, but am mightily disturbed that in my absence (save for some discrete lurking), noone at AGB has pointed to Tiger Woods' brilliant line in his press conference recently ; explaining how his wandering days were over, he proclaimed "I am getting back to my old roots".
Now that is surely deserving of its own story!

[Scubloke]

I like coffee. My Lovely Wife likes tea. We got a machine on Fleabay that makes coffee on one side and tea on the other. We are happy.
Except for one thing - baristas. How is that even a word? They are just shop assistants with a coffee machine and a 'tude.
Wankers.

[Lou]

Is it the water in Melbourne that makes it taste like shite?

[patard]

The first coffee in the morning with 3 cigarettes and half a cup of sugar is just about the best non-alcoholic thing there is. The taste is not important. You know what's important.

Without cigarettes a short black is required.

What is over-rated is a Stout claiming to have a hint of chocolate. Young's Double Chocolate Stout is actually brewed with chocolate malt but it's no better for it. Bitterness, tonnes of it, is what's required - plus the alcohol content of course.

I think being a barista is what you do once you've finally admitted you're an acloholic and have finished the 12 step programme. Then spend the rest of your life discussing the subtleties of coffee bean flavourings and their nationalities all the while pining for that wonderful lost weekend you so desperately cry for late at night in your bed while no one's around to hear the sobs.

Great to see Prof Rosseforp back in action.

[Tony]

Yeah, welcome back, Prof.

I confess I did actually see that comment from Tigger. Which means I also confess to being off my game in that I did not get it onto the blog. This was due to a combination of busyness at work and confusion over whether I wanted to do another Tiger post and whether that post should revolve around Tiger's roots vis-a-vis his women, Tiger's roots vis-a-vis the TV show Roots or a combination of both.

[Tony]

On coffee.

The Melbourne Magazine in the Friday Age - and, I assume, the Sydney Magazine in the SMH - is aimed fairly and squarely at Coffee Wankers. As is the other Age magazine, Sport Style.

What a nauseating pair of hipster deadshit rags.

[Alex Haley]

You can all go lick my back-assed balls.

[Tony]

Alex,

You're too generous.

[Alex Haley]

Tony, I note you had to dumb it down and call it a "TV show."

That's sad, yet sadly understandable. It's like calling The Bible a movie.

[Cecil B. DeMille]

And the problem is?

[Big Ramifications]

I'll do all the funny stuff, you two.

[Lou]

The further south you go in Italy the better the food/coffee/cakes.

The tinned muck passing for food in Berlin makes up for the coffee.

Great beer but.

[Carrot]

If you want cake AND beer, you have to go to Bavaria. Austria's not bad either.

[Lou]

If you want beer AND chocolate, you have to go to Belgium.

[patard]

Alex, do your back-assed balls come with dark chocolate notes, a hint of sour anchovies and a long finish of Chorizo sausage?

Interesting combination but not my cup of...coffee.

[Tony]

Alex,

Right, so that's it. I thought you were an internet nutter popping in to throw abuse around. A comment with no relevance to the post? "Back-assed balls"? But it turns out you were only making a comment about Roots. Who knew it had such a passionate disciple. I only ever saw the first episode, but I'm assuming it was better than the Winds of War or Shogun.

PS: The Bible is a movie, isn't it?

PPS: Coincidentally, did you know that the mini-series Jesus of Nazareth came out the same year as Roots?

[patard]

I thought Alex was Big Rammer in disguise. If it's not then someone sure does take their roots, the tv show that is, seriously.

I wonder if Leon Uris might pop in to make a plug for Trinity. It is Holy Week after all.

[Lou]

Robert Powell was one creepy looking Jesus.

[patard]

True story: my son made a 1.7m x 1m cross on the weekend from the remains of a bunk bed. My girls gaffer taped him to it after he carried it across the back back yard as we (me and the old man) hurled abuse and roughed him up and the girls sang "This is the cross, on which Jesus died for us." Got it all on film.

The boy has asked me to help him make a sign "Come and watch God get hammered to the cross" for an Easter Saturday show he wants to put on for the devoutly atheist visiting in-laws. Should go down a treat.

I was impressed with his carpentry skills, not to mention his sense of drama. A budding young Mel in the making. My mrs had already made the remark some time ago that sometimes she feels like she's been married into a cult. I'm starting to wonder that myself.

You're right about Powell Lou. I prefer James Caviezel's Jesus from Mel's film.

[Tony]

Give him a stake, tell him to plant garlic and change his name to Van Helsing.

[patard]

Lol. Only Dracula he's seen is in Abbott and Costello.

We watched the Creature from the Black Lagoon last year at the end of which he broke down in tears asking "Why did we have to watch that show!" He went to bed with the DVD cover and we had to print out some wall posters of the Creature from the web for his room.

Who would have thought the Creature would strike such a chord in a young lad? He got all his mates into it. Must be one of the most popular DVDs now in the mountains.

You're right. Time to toughen him up with some Van Helsing.

[Tony]

The Passion of the Christ is the bloodiest film I've ever seen. I don't mean gory (John Carpenter's Vampires) or bloody (Bloodsucking Freaks), I mean real people smothered in blood. Mel must have taken "the blood of Christ" literally. He hates Jews, right?

[patard]

I think he loves them and prays for their conversion.

[patard]

It's bloody allright, though Biblically accurate.

For sheer horror I'd go with Mel's Apocalypto when the tribesmen are sacrificed live to Quetzalcoatl.

César Tort at The West's Darkest Hour has been writing a pretty interesting book posted serially on his blog based on the subject.

[RT]

I'm only buying Dilmah in reverence to the Dilmah Tea Party. Spucial.

[Tony]

Billy Birmingham and Crash Craddock took the piss out of the Dilmah Tea Party on The Back Page. Most humorous.