More than a cup

It doesn’t matter whether you’re up at dawn or easing yourself into the day, chances are you’ll start your morning with a coffee. In Melbourne it seems everyone has their favourite cafes, from perfectly designed eateries that also serve innovative brunch dishes to tiny holes in the wall.

Excellent coffee venues are everywhere, and cartographer and illustrator Alex Hotchin has captured a handful of the best on her Melbourne Moments map, seen exclusively in the Autumn 2023 issue of the Melbourne Official Visitor Guide.

“I make art and books to tell stories about the world around me,” she says. “But I’m especially interested in the art of map making and inherent subjectivity of experiencing a place.” What that means is Alex has captured a side of Melbourne that is special to her, incorporating not just the coffee shops she and her friends love, such as Proud Mary, Patricia, Market Lane and Brother Baba Budan, but also some of the quirkier elements that make this city special.

Coffee and community 

At RMIT, Professor Francis Farrelly and Associate Professor Bernardo Figueiredo study the many ways Melbourne creates its own identity. One of those ways is through its obsession with coffee. “Coffee and cafes are a fundamental part of Melbourne’s culture,” says Francis. “There is both great variety and a steady stream of innovation in coffee taste and preparation.”

But the connection goes much further than it being simply a hot beverage we enjoy consuming. 

“Coffee is a  quintessential manifestation of how people from different cultures and all walks of life meet and share meaningful moments in Melbourne,” says Bernardo. “It’s how they create a sense of belonging and community"

Bean there, learn that 

If you’re someone who has a standard coffee order, now might be the time to discover more about what goes into your cup. “Talk to one of Melbourne’s many great baristas to broaden your knowledge,” says Francis. “They are passionate, knowledgeable, and only too willing to educate the novice coffee drinker.”

You can also learn more by taking a class. At its Collins Street venue, Market Lane offers everything from a three-hour lesson on how to make a perfect espresso to an appreciation class where you can sip your way through different specialty coffees. “You can also find out where the iconic coffee shops are, then get to know their history and the city through planned visits,” says Bernardo.

So very Melbourne 

But, for the two researchers, it wasn’t the roasters’ fascination with finding the perfect single-origin beans or the attention to detail in every cup poured by the city’s baristas that most surprised them about Melbourne’s coffee scene.

“It was just how embedded coffee is in Melbourne’s cultural fabric and how it projects how we see ourselves,” says Francis. “It is a key to our weekends, our rituals before work, catch-ups, what we do before and after other social activities, what it means to be part of a community, and what we do to relax with friends or by oneself. It is where you see Melburnians in their natural habitat.”