Sweet potato coffee: A guide to Melbourne’s hipster, vegan, superfood lattes

WE’VE seen a lot that brings into question the good name of Melbourne’s coffee scene lately, but the newest vegan latte might just be the most outrageous brew yet.

OK Melbourne, enough is enough.

The whole hipster latte thing was fun at the beginning. First there were matcha lattes. Then deconstructed lattes. Then the whole avolatte thing happened.

Heck, we even tried charcoal lattes, rainbow lattes and blue algae lattes. Not to mention those glitter lattes and hollowed-out carrot lattes.

Surely we’ve exhausted all the novelty, non-coffee latte options, right?

Wrong.

From this ...

... To this. The taro latte at Long Story Short Cafe in Port Melbourne.

Enter potato lattes.

It turns out purple sweet potato lattes and taro lattes are now a thing.

You might be asking yourself — what’s not to love about potatoes?

They are indeed a versatile vegetable and, for some people, would even be considered a major food group.

Tuber latte might even seem like a natural progression from root vegetable latte.

When cafes started adding espresso shots to their chai lattes and calling them ‘dirty’, we totally jumped on board.

Matcha latte: We’ve moved way beyond this. Picture: Richard Hatherly

Dairy-free mylks are now so ubiquitous that we don’t even flinch at paying an extra $1 for plant-based alternatives like almond, coconut and soy.

Golden (or turmeric) lattes are on the menu at many cafes.

They’re so mainstream that they’re probably not even hipster.

And, because we’ll try anything once, we even embraced butter coffee.

Who doesn’t want their espresso with a shot of organic, grass-fed butter and a dollop of coconut oil?

But surely there are some foods that just do not need to also be coffee.

What’s next? Kalecinos? Coriander lattes? Celery espressos?

Melbourne’s quirky coffee culture is having a meltdown (we blame you, Instagram).

Have we finally reached the point when someone has to stand up and say: “leave lattes alone”?