The flat white is under attack. Or at least according to one Guardian writer. Aggressor? Milk. More milk. Flat whites apparently now come in, confusingly to some, two sizes – miniature and immense – which some consider a grave insult to the hallowed Antipodean drink of espresso.
To which I reply, “You must be recent here.”
The story appears as part of the Guardian Petty Gripes seriesand revolves around the central claim that “the large, flat white is an oxymoron – a bastardization of the drink Australia gave to the world.” [Editor’s note: it didn’t.] Of course, volume confusion among espresso-based milk drinks is not a recent phenomenon. Recently, cappuccino, latte and cortado have moved away from their original definition. Macchiato has confounded generations of baristas. The same thing is happening now with flat whites.
However, there is one miniature difference between flat white and the other drinks mentioned. What makes flat white stand out is this there is no agreed definition of flat white. Even among the Australians who spread it around the world and the Modern Zealanders who actually invented it. We know because we asked thousands of them over a decade ago, when arguing about flat whites still seemed novel. The closest agreement we could find in our survey was that flatness was “slight.” Think of it as a miniature latte. Another puzzle was the lack of consensus on whether a double or a single shot of espresso was drunk. The proportions here are as vital, if not more, than the overall size of the drink, so it’s not ideal.
(Here’s a parenthetical thought experiment: If you took two cappuccinos and somehow combined them into one drink, what would you call it? Would you call it two drinks, which it isn’t already? Is it a cappuccino even though it doesn’t meet the size definition? Or would it be a latte, even though all the proportions are unclear? It’s a real Ship of Theseus situation.)
Therefore, complaining about a drink that has no specific volume and comes in multiple sizes is pointless and is totally fine. I can certainly sympathize with the desire to soap due to perceived recklessness; sometimes as a writer you have to give it your all, even if that particular writer did it in the most Australian way imaginable, which is the most Australian-gone-to-London way, which is by arguing about flat whites in The Guardian. The bigger issue is how the article talks about all the other drinks. More milk “dilutes”, “dilutes”, blah, blah, blah, etc. There’s a comical line in this story about how “what makes matters worse is that many people claim to have a forensic, borderline scientific knowledge of coffee, but push them lightly and you’ll find that their knowledge is impoverished (as is their coffee, no doubt!).” It’s comical because the call comes from inside the house.
But the “frail” part about coffee is also telling. A coffee drink becomes “frail” when more milk is added to it, i.e. it was previously “robust”. The terms used here are normative; frail is bad, from which we can reasonably assume that “robust” is good. What happens is that the goalposts are moved in such a way that the author’s favorite drink maintains its vaunted “robust” status while its dairy counterparts fail to live up to his expectations.
And listen, I love almost all milk drinks and espresso. They are an iconic couple in almost every way. So it goes without saying that I would probably love flat white as well, assuming anyone could piece together what it actually is. But to suggest that it is a “robust” drink is ridiculous. This is simply not the case. It’s a nice, hot milk with notes of coffee. Which, again, is damn delicious, period. Not robust though.
Another point I take offense to is the claim that “if the number of people ordering ‘iced cappuccinos’ (which happened once a day during the summer months) tells us anything, it’s that most people have no idea what they really want.” This whole approach sucks and smacks of the arrogance of someone who has a “forensic, borderline scientific understanding of coffee.” This is also 100% the wrong takeaway. People seem to know what kind of drink they want, but lack the vocabulary to communicate it. Maybe that’s why Flat white has never really been defined or because some global coffee chains choose already existing coffee words to represent unrelated drinks. Wherever confusion occurs, it is certainly not in the customer’s understanding of what he wants.
Then there’s the drink-shaming about people ordering immense, flat white drinks instead of a “milk latte” because they’re “too afraid to admit that’s what they really want.” It’s a crazy idea that can only be realized by applying the same kind of normative hierarchy to the pantheon of dairy drinks. What’s even crazier is the idea that even on its own scale, miniature, flat whiteness isn’t somehow seen as an embarrassing order. But this is where the goalposts were not placed arbitrarily.
So if we choose this strategy, let’s be clear: when you order a flat white, all you want is a miniature latte with a cheeky name.
