It’s not bad. When I was dragged out of a New York snowstorm for a task only an Australian could perform, I expected to be lashing Starbucks for not getting it right. I had the rhetoric ready: a hopeless attempt by an American chain to exploit the Australasian flat white. But it’s OK.
Of course they’re fiddling with the name. There’s a sensitivity lurking here that Australians don’t recognise. Back home we have short blacks and long blacks, coffees never sold under those names in cafes anywhere else in the world. So it’s no surprise that at Starbucks on 8th Avenue in Chelsea the staff are calling their new coffee a flat top.
And the taste? Well, it’s strong and milky and hot – and there is a lot of it. Even the small cup goes down for ever. But the biggest thing in the new coffee’s favor is simply this: it’s not the brown swill Americans drink by the gallon.
For Australians who want to come to America and pretend they’ve never left home, Starbucks is offering a useful service. But will it catch on with the locals? The bar is low. After all, this is a nation which has, for no particular reason, taken Hugh Jackman, Ugg boots and the Murdochs to its heart. Why not a new milky coffee?
