Who invented the flat white?
Not that long ago, you would have been hard pressed to find a Flat White outside of New Zealand and Australia. Now the coffee has popped up across the globe and become the go-to drink for coffee connoisseurs.
Who invented the flat white?
Take a walk around London, Tokyo, Los Angeles, or Barcelona and you’ll easily find a flat white. But this wasn’t always the case, with antipodean expats desperately seeking out the coffee fix from home for years. Now the flat white is a feature in cafes across the globe, with the likes of New Zealand companies Allpress, Ozone, and Caravan coffee wholesaling to cafes worldwide.
Google Doodle, a temporary change in the website’s logo, even celebrated the day when ‘flat white’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011.
But who invented it? Some say the flat white originated in Wellington in 1989 when a despondent barista named Fraser McInnes made a cappuccino with low-fat milk that refused to froth.
Showcasing ingenuity at its finest, he named the failed cappuccino a flat white, and the term stuck. Now it can be found anywhere from Britain to Japan and even the United States, with Starbucks including it on their menu.
However, the coffee choice of antipodeans has been the subject of an unsettled debate down under. Australia also attempts to claim the now-famous flat white (a familiar scenario with Australia trying to claim other New Zealand icons - Pavlova or Phar Lap anyone?)
A real flat white
Smaller than a latte, the flat white consists of one-third espresso, two-thirds milk. The milk is steamed, not frothed, to leave a smooth and velvety crema on top.
Even Vogue has weighed in on the debate, pointing out why New Zealand has the advantage when it comes to making a great coffee.
First, New Zealand prides itself on having a superior dairy industry. Better milk makes better coffee. Second (and this gets a little technical), in New Zealand typically espresso shots are used in coffee, but Australians typically use ristretto shots. A classic espresso shot is pulled for a few seconds longer than a ristretto, resulting in 50 percent more volume.
“That means that a flat white from New Zealand will have a substantially more intense, robust, caffeinated flavour.”
“New Zealanders and Australians might source and roast their beans in similar ways, but the New Zealanders are really squeezing out each bean’s true potential. It’s a distinction that might seem didactic, but for coffee nuts it’s everything.”
So, even if it wasn’t invented in New Zealand, it was certainly perfected here.
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