I’m no longer a coffee snob – Starbucks is fine

There’s a coffee shop in central Kyoto that takes its product very seriously. Actually, there are several coffee shops in central Kyoto that aren’t messing around, but the one I’m talking about is 2050 Coffee, and caffeine there is an art form.

The store is set in an old, covered shopping street, and inside it looks part-cafe, part high-fashion boutique, with one floor dedicated to a showroom of artisanal beans and coffee-making paraphernalia. The actual coffee here is made with the sort of space-age instrumentation you might expect in a chemistry lab, with pour-over style, cold brew, and Australian-Italian style espresso.

I’ll probably never be allowed into Melbourne again. But come on. Starbucks coffee is not that bad.Credit: Getty Images

The name of the store refers to its focus on the sustainability of the coffee trade, which will apparently be in dire circumstances across the globe by 2050. Oh, and they also serve vegan donuts.

I’m staying here in Kyoto with a group of Australians and, of course, they’ve all sought out the best coffee in the area and have been hitting up 2050 every morning. The coffee at our hotel is terrible, so what are you going to do? You’re going to look elsewhere.

Only, I haven’t been going to 2050. For the past couple of mornings I’ve instead quietly made a left turn out of our building and walked a few blocks to the riverside to visit a well-known brand: Starbucks. There, I’ve sat down with a tall caffe latte and some sort of warmed-up pastry, admired the views over the Kamo River and the people of Kyoto out exercising, and prepared to get on with my day.

This confession could get me cancelled, I realise. But I feel it’s something I need to own up to.

I’m not a coffee snob. Not in the way most Australians now declare themselves to be, and indeed in the way many Australians act when they travel to foreign countries and complain incessantly about the crap local brews.

When you’re travelling, Starbucks is often up there with the best coffee available.Credit: Getty Images

I’m fairly sure I used to be a coffee snob, and that you could trawl through my back catalogue and discover me doing exactly what I just described in the previous paragraph. But a strange thing has been happening over the past few years: I’m like the Benjamin Button of coffee snobbery, watching as my discerning tastes become increasingly basic.

It’s not just coffee, either. It’s also beer. Like most balding, middle-aged suburban dads who don’t like cycling, I’ve been getting into craft beers for a while now – IPAs, goses, NEIPAs, and so on – but right now, if you offered me a nice tall glass of anything in the world, it would be a plain old Japanese lager.

But anyway, back to the coffee. I’ve been going to Starbucks. I’ve become ambivalent towards artisanal, single-origin pour-overs with notes of fruit and spice. I can’t really be bothered with all the ceremony and – let’s be real here – bullshit.

“I’ve become ambivalent towards artisanal, single-origin pour-overs with notes of fruit and spice.”

One of the first things I think we should all admit, even if it’s only in our darkest, most private moments, is that Starbucks coffee is actually reasonably good when you’re travelling. As long as you avoid the insane chai-caramel frozen mocha-latte jobs, and instead just order the smallest caffe latte they will sell you, it tastes just fine.

This is heresy I know, and I’ll probably never be allowed into Melbourne again. But come on. Starbucks coffee is not that bad. Nowhere near as terrible as plenty of people make out. I’m not going to drink it in Australia, where there’s better coffee from pretty much every cafe in the country – but when you’re travelling, Starbucks is often up there with the best coffee available.

And even when there’s no evil American corporation around, I’ve found my coffee tastes changing when I’m on the road. I don’t need arty brilliance. I just want something a little better than the press-button jobs at basic hotel buffets.

I’m enjoying Spanish coffee more these days, which is weird. Either Spaniards are getting better at making a brew, or my tastes are adjusting to a little more bitterness, and the absolute molten-lava heat of badly steamed milk. Maybe it’s both. But I’m fine with it.

I don’t need a perfect flat white every day when I’m travelling. I don’t go tramping around foreign cities in search of an antipodean-style coffee with a pretty milky pattern. I don’t travel with an Aeropress. I don’t – as I saw a tour guide in Georgia do recently – move around the world with my own artisanal beans and a grinder to make a fresh brew every morning.

I mostly just drink whatever is going, whatever locals are into. I still have the sense to avoid half-arsed hotel coffee and step out on my own for something better, but then I’m just going to a local cafe or bar and getting an Americano with milk on the side, or a flat white, or a cappuccino, or whatever it is they do in that place.

It strikes me that maybe we Australians don’t need to make coffee snobbery a character trait. Maybe we could just relax a little. And even occasionally admit that a grande caffe latte isn’t the worst thing in the world.