The Milky Way

- Samantha Teague

Paris. Tokyo. London. Santiago. The humble flat white now appears on café menus around the globe. The precise birthplace of this Antipodean creation, however, is a point of contention in the coffee world. “There have been a lot of claims to who invented the flat white,” says Hazel de los Reyes, owner of Sydney’s Coffee Alchemy. “It’s a bit of a trans-Tasman feud.”

Some say it was invented by New Zealand coffee pioneer Jeff Kennedy at Wellington’s Caffè L’affare, which he founded in 1990. Others say it grew from Australia’s love of instant coffee. “Instant coffee was the dominant coffee in Australia,” says Les Schirato, CEO of Vittoria Coffee. “Then in the late ’80s Italian-based espresso started to grow.” But instant coffee drinkers wanted an espresso-based drink that resembled what they were used to, not the aerated frothy cappuccino transplanted from Italy, so baristas started making coffees with less foam.