Monday, January 23, 2006
Greetings from Down Under
Greetings to all from the land of the "short back" and "flat white".
H&V have started a three week mainly holiday trip to Aus this past weekend and we are currently both in an internet cafe in Sydney.
Unbelievably on our first walk out of our hotel in South Sydney (Cleveland St. fo those of you who know), we found two coffee roasters operating within a block! One is called Voodoo Espresso and the other one, operating out of a storefront on Cleveland St called Berardo Coffee.
It looks like I won't get to meet Robert Wilson from Berardo as he's only open Weds. through Saturday and we're off to Queensland!
Without being in the least patronising - the espresso in Sydney is uniformly better served than in the UK. ....but that's not saying much. And coffee (or is it cappuccino??) culture is ingrained, baristas are well trained and they care what they give you. Certainly there are far more independents than in any other city I have been to outside of Italy.
All this was "flagged" to me by Aussie friends before the trip and I'm not disappointed.
I'm hoping to get to see the other side of coffee down under in about 10 days time when we try to visit some of the coffee farms in the Mount Warning area of northern NSW.
There's a"big" question I need to answer. If Australia has such good taste in coffee and the coffee they produce is as good as claimed, then why does any of it become available for export?
More later..
Highlight so far - definitely watching Sri Lanka stuff the Baggy Greens in my first ever one day cricket game at the SCG on sunday. A rare pleasure for a smirking pom amongst 38,000 sulking Aussies and about 500 wildly happy Sri Lankans!
H&V have started a three week mainly holiday trip to Aus this past weekend and we are currently both in an internet cafe in Sydney.
Unbelievably on our first walk out of our hotel in South Sydney (Cleveland St. fo those of you who know), we found two coffee roasters operating within a block! One is called Voodoo Espresso and the other one, operating out of a storefront on Cleveland St called Berardo Coffee.
It looks like I won't get to meet Robert Wilson from Berardo as he's only open Weds. through Saturday and we're off to Queensland!
Without being in the least patronising - the espresso in Sydney is uniformly better served than in the UK. ....but that's not saying much. And coffee (or is it cappuccino??) culture is ingrained, baristas are well trained and they care what they give you. Certainly there are far more independents than in any other city I have been to outside of Italy.
All this was "flagged" to me by Aussie friends before the trip and I'm not disappointed.
I'm hoping to get to see the other side of coffee down under in about 10 days time when we try to visit some of the coffee farms in the Mount Warning area of northern NSW.
There's a"big" question I need to answer. If Australia has such good taste in coffee and the coffee they produce is as good as claimed, then why does any of it become available for export?
More later..
Highlight so far - definitely watching Sri Lanka stuff the Baggy Greens in my first ever one day cricket game at the SCG on sunday. A rare pleasure for a smirking pom amongst 38,000 sulking Aussies and about 500 wildly happy Sri Lankans!
# posted by Charles Massey @ 11:47 am 
