Easy answer: when Starbucks or Costa Coffee are making it…

What’s a flat white you ask? I discovered it around 18 months ago, but it’s an Australian classic in the coffee world. The perfect bridge between a double espresso macchiato and a really strong latte, which, done well is the perfect coffee for someone who wants a strong coffee kick and a bit, but not too much, milk on the top. The milk is always full fat, and very silky. The coffee base is usually three shots of “ristretto”, the first bit of espresso that comes out of the machine.

The two big coffee chains I mentioned have recently jumped on a bandwagon that in the UK at least started in coffee houses in Soho and Bloomsbury. Stores such as Monmouth, Flat White, Fernandez & Wells and Lantana have been serving the drink for a few years, and it’s become popular with the crowd of coffee connoisseurs who frequent this rash of independent, antipodean-inspired coffee stores in central London. I’m not sure of the mass appeal of the drink in the UK, because it is quite strong, but it’s certainly an improvement on the popular “latte” or jug of milk with a hint of coffee which people in this country seem to love so much.

Starbucks was first, and it was initially only available in the fancy new concept store just off Regents Street. When I saw the ad I was intrigued and I tried it straight away. Verdict? Starbucks’ bitter coffee isn’t the right base, and the milk they use is semi-skimmed I believe. The new cup they introduced is nice, and the barista tried to achieve the typical flat white pattern on top, but it wasn’t a flat white. It was bitter.

When I landed at Heathrow last Saturday from my trip to Lebanon, I noticed that Costa was making quite a fuss about its version of the flat white. I tried it. Apparently the company has spent upwards of £1million to train staff on how to make this new drink perfectly. What a waste of money! The poor barista, who I truly felt sorry for, couldn’t achieve the pattern which Costa had captured so perfectly in the poster for the new drink. He tried, but explained to me that the one in the poster was the “Picasso version”. The drink itself wasn’t too bad – the coffee an improvement on Starbucks, but there was too much milk as the cup was too big.

If these two coffee monsters are betting that their versions of the flat white are going to make up for falling revenues, I think they’ve bet on the wrong horse. Well actually, maybe the masses will take up the drink and enjoy it. But for a stuck-up, snob of a coffee purist like me, these two versions of a coffee favourite don’t cut the mustard.

If you want to experience the true flat white, get in touch and I’ll take you to Fernandez & Wells!

It’s only been since the start of the year that I have experienced Australian/Kiwi (antipodean) coffee culture in London. Since a friend introduced me to Flat White (flat-white.co.uk) in Soho, and really enjoying the coffee there, I’ve been intrigued as to why antipodeans make such nice coffee, and happy that some of them have decided to bring it to these shores. I’ve also recently discovered Fernandez & Wells (Beak St and also Lexington St, also in Soho – fernandezandwells.com), which was voted the best coffee retailer in London by TimeOut magazine, and has also featured in various other publications. I started going last month, and have been back as often as I can over the last few weeks. The coffee is expensive at £2.50 for a latte (there’s no sizing, just the regular size), but the quality is unsurpassed. If you’re in town, and if you want to taste genuine coffee instead of the Starbucks bucket of hot milk/Pret burnt coffee, do go and try it.

I’m yet to visit the ubiquitous Monmouth, but I’m sure it won’t be long now. That’s the company which provides the coffee beans to all of the other Aussie/Kiwi cafes in Soho. The quality is excellent, and there’s also something to be said for the milk, machinery and of course the human expertise that you find in these places. I don’t know what the antipodean secret is, but anybody who runs a coffee store anyway should pay attention. I certainly wish my local cafes did!

This is a thought that’s been on my mind for quite a while now. Despite the attention paid to personalities, politics is meant to be about solutions to make a country better, and to give opportunities to people to live full and prosperous lives. At least that’s the idea! Sometimes we succeed, sometimes politics is reduced to drivelling debates about which person is leading which party and who is writing what in the newspapers. Anyhow, politicians make policies, that’s why they’re called politicians. How do we go about crafting policies? We hold consultation, we create research institutes and think tanks, we ask experts how to respond to a particular crisis. There are many ways.

One way I like in particular is despatching ministers to foreign lands to find out what’s going well abroad. I used to enjoy hearing my grandmother talk about her many trips around the world with various education secretaries – she was a departmental private secretary at the Department for Education under Gillian Shepherd, Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Hodge amongst others. As a child I already knew that the Swedes do education better, or that was the general opinion anyway. And when I got older I had the opportunity to travel to places like Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium etc., where living standards are far higher than here in the UK. As a thinking person I’m always intrigued when I visit one of these countries; I want to know what they do differently to us that results in a better life for their citizens. So I understand the rationale behind sending ministers off to learn lessons, and I think we should do it even more.

But! I think we’re failing to learn the lessons. We must be, because whilst the Labour government has done an awful lot to improve things like healthcare, education etc. since we’ve been in government this time around, I strongly believe that the United Kingdom with all of our wealth, industriousness, academia and innovation, could yet be a better place to live. I think it’s wonderful that we have universal healthcare, a relatively good education system and some of the best universities on Earth. But try comparing public transportation in Geneva or Zurich with London or Manchester. There’s no comparison! And there’s also no excuse! Infant education in Scandinavia is far superior to our own, and the devolved Welsh government has recognised this and now provides some of the best infant education in the world (3-7 year olds), based on the Scandinavian model of learning whilst playing.

And this doesn’t just apply to policy-making in the UK. I’m certain that there are lessons in almost every country in the world which could be shared with neighbours and other countries further afield. Surely in our modern age, with the level of internet penetration as it is, we should be able to share best practice and good ideas more efficiently. Nowadays, it’s done through ministerial visits, think-tank research and the like, but if there were a central bank of ideas, which policy-makers all over the world could log into, surely that would be more efficient and would reduce the cost and effort required to extract this knowledge. Experts, such as academics and civil servants posting ideas, could post the initial outline, and if a government agency or politician wants to use it, they could pay a consultancy fee in return for the poster fleshing it out. Eventually this could spread to other areas, such as business, culture, social entrepreneurship etc.

The web revolution that is web 2.0 (sorry for the cliche) has opened up communication channels that didn’t exist before. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are bringing people closer together, which is great. But beyond making connections, there’s no specific value that you can attribute to these tools. Of course there is a lot of intangible value in bringing people together more efficiently, but I wonder if a global, web-based idea bank aimed at improving societies and lives, could actually work, and could lead to a revolution in the way we learn and govern.