On the second morning during a trip to Melbourne, Australia, last year, I walked six minutes from the hotel where I was staying in the city’s Central Business District to Flinders Lane, one of many area streets dense with restaurants and shops and buildings that date back to the 1850s. My destination: an exceptional cup of coffee.
Code Black, with seven locations, has been roasting beans since 2012. Its name appears on plenty of lists about where to drink coffee in Melbourne. The vibe of the CBD outpost mirrors the name — shadowed interior, signage with vaguely futuristic fonts — and could be easily mistaken as a cocktail bar rather than a coffee shop.
How, where and why to drink incredible coffee in Melbourne
I asked for a cortado and a pour-over, my standard double-caffeine jolt when jet-lagged. It was nearly 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and the place wasn’t too busy yet. When the barista behind the counter began making the pour-over I’d ordered using beans from a farm called Finca Zarza in Colombia (tasting notes: “winey, cherry ripe, milk chocolate, and hot cocoa”), I wandered over to him.
Coffee at the CBD location of Code Black, a local coffee company in Melbourne, Australia
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
“Hi,” I said. “I’m visiting Melbourne and I’m kind of a pour-over geek. The more expressive, the better. Any suggestions on where I should check out tomorrow morning?”
He looked up from his work, kettle of hot water in hand, and his face bloomed with a sincere smile.
“You’ve heard of Proud Mary?” he asked. I had: Founder Nolan Hirte was among the leaders who’d helped build on Melbourne’s early coffee culture, established by Italian immigrants and their daily espresso habits in the mid-20th century, into a defining capital of coffee excellence.
“Aunty Peg’s is the pour-over bar in front of the Proud Mary’s roastery in Collingswood,” he continued. “Start there.” He handed me a mug full of coffee that delivered on its promised gusts of cherry and chocolate.
This, then, is how I began every morning in Melbourne, showing up at another coffee shop and asking another barista for another recommendation. Adopting the daily ritual led me into the most rewarding coffee-drinking adventure of my life.
I spent several recent weeks reliving this trip. Last month, The Times published a Food team project themed to summer travel: how to savor the breadth of Los Angeles anew if you stick around for vacation, and inspirational guides for eating and drinking through some of our favorite places on the globe, including Mexico City, Paris, Tokyo, Lima, Hong Kong and London.
A view of Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, Australia, with the downtown skyline in the background
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
In addition to a rundown of the restaurants and bars I most loved in and around Victoria, Australia’s world-class metropolis, I wrote an essay about the reasons Melbourne compelled me. As with Los Angeles, Melbourne’s modern dining moment flowers from the immigrant communities that have rooted in the city since its founding in the 1830s. An ideal guide awaited: Besha Rodell, chief restaurant critic for the city’s daily newspaper, the Age, previous food critic for L.A. Weekly and one of my closest friends for 20 years.
The story covers the details of our dining escapades, though I largely sidestepped my solo coffee wanderings in the writing. It was Besha who nudged me into coffee drinking 15 years ago. I was an invested tea nerd then (still am), but an afternoon macchiato she pushed on me lurched me awake when I needed it, and was also smoother than I’d known bitter espresso before in restaurants or generalist cafes. What kind of flavor possibilities in coffee did I know nothing about?
Coffee ballooned into a serious pursuit when I moved to Los Angeles in 2018. This is a city that supports an ever-growing number of creative minds crafting the gamut of coffee, from purist espresso pulls to wildly spiced, cream-drenched concoctions.
Mostly, I make pour-overs at home. I caught pour-over fever from Jack Benchakul, the front man of tiny Endorffeine in Chinatown who has made every cup of coffee for customers since he opened the shop with his cousin in 2015. This year, Benchakul was also the first-ever coffee professional nominated for a James Beard Foundation award in the “Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service” category. I’ve taken his classes. The variable timing, temperatures, grind consistency and ratios for excellent pour-overs are tricky to master — which is arguably part of the obsession for me. It makes sense that most coffee drinkers want a simple enough beverage that’s reassuringly consistent to begin each day. I want novelty, and exhilaration, and the small victory of meeting the challenge … or the practice of learning from my mistakes when a cup misses the mark.
Jack Benchakul, owner of Endorffeine in LA’s Chinatown, finishing a pour-over.
(Oscar Mendoza / For The Times)
As a dedicated home brewer, it was almost jarring how Melbourne met my tastes, place after place.
Aunty Peg’s was, sure enough, pour-over heaven, with a dozen by-the-cup options (from farms employing modernist fermentation techniques and descriptions like “chocolate, marzipan, stone fruit marmalade and toffee” and a few straight espressos as well. I figured out quickly that cafes designating themselves as “black coffee only” was code for flat-white lovers to find their happiness elsewhere, which usually was just a few doors down the block. There really is good coffee usually a few paces in any direction in central Melbourne.
Inside Path, an excellent coffee shop near Queen Victoria Market.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
By the end of collecting recommendations, I was heading to shops that hadn’t been as obvious in online searches — and that I ended up loving the most. Path Coffee is a four-minute walk from Queen Victoria Market, and like that landmark it attracts a thorough mix of locals and visitors.
Founders Josh Manitta and Ashlee Larsen came up with a smart visual wall chart to illuminate their ever-changing coffees; it helps remove the whiffs of pretension out of identifying flavors of citrus or berry or, whatever, let’s say, passion fruit pith. That said, I ended up at the counter, while Manitta juggled expert pour-overs in batches of four, talking with a guy who travels full-time for work and was building an app to catalog his worldwide coffee experiences.
The Path team steered me to City Saints for my final morning of coffee outings. It’s a multi-roaster cafe that’s extremely capable of meeting wide-ranging needs: You could walk in, order an iced latte or a beautifully straightforward black coffee and move on in your day. Owner Dennis Roshal has a knack for homing in on the obsessives. He ended up sitting down at my table, having a head-spinning talk about brewing gear that reminded me I am but an enthusiastic novice. He kindly sold me the last beans he had of an Indonesian varietal from Offshoot Coffee that tasted equally of peach, rose and vanilla — dessert for breakfast, essentially.
On that trip, Besha and I would meet up mid- or late-morning to plunge into the day’s eating. In the way of true friendship, I didn’t talk much about my coffee adventures and she didn’t much ask, other than to be glad I was enjoying myself. She is not a pour-over person. When she would visit me in Los Angeles, I tried early in my zealousness to push my zaniest findings on her: “Isn’t it cool how it tastes like whiskey and dates? Can I brew you two super rich Yemeni varietals for side-by-side comparison?”
Now I make her a cup of coffee that tastes like coffee, splashed with whole milk. She tells me it is delicious. In the afternoon, as always, we go out for macchiatos.
Six favorite coffee destinations in Melbourne:
Code Black, instagram.com/codeblackcoffee
Auntie Peg’s/Proud Mary, instagram.com/auntypegsbypmc, instagram.com/proudmarycoffee
Brother Baba Budan, instagram.com/brotherbababudan
Path Melbourne, instagram.com/pathmelbourne
Disciple, instagram.com/discipleroasters
City Saints, instagram.com/thecitysaints
Also …
- This week, fellow critic Jenn Harris has a review of Baldi, the new Beverly Hills steakhouse. Her favorite thing on the menu? Pasta.
- Stephanie Breijo follows how the $38 Wagyu basturma brisket sandwich at Yerord Mas has became an online lightning rod, igniting hundreds of online comments over price, tradition and respect. (For the record, Yerord Mas is one of my favorite restaurants to open this year.)
- Cooking editor Cody Reiss has a suggestion for how to use the bounty of summer fruit before chucking it in the compost bin: Make a crisp.
