Black Coffee pop-up shop at Outré Gallery

I’ll let you in on a food secret: I’ve never had instant coffee.

Now before you go turning up your noses at me and branding me a coffee snob, this is actually not through any conscious doing on my part. It’s just that I don’t crave coffee and I’m not one of those people who absolutely need coffee to function. If anything, I’m a tea drinker but even then it’s purely for comfort rather than caffeine or antioxidant properties.

My first cup of coffee ever, as a teenager, was a cappuccino from a common food court chain which doesn’t specialise in coffee. It was bitter and I proclaimed that it needed more milk and more sugar. In hindsight it may have been burnt, but who was I to know any better? My next cup of coffee wasn’t until many years later in my early twenties, and my coffee progression since then has been: caffe mocha, caffe latte, flat white.

Whilst I haven’t progressed to a piccolo latte or a macchiato as my coffee of choice, I do enjoy an occasional espresso... although more often than not it is doused over a scoop of vanilla ice-cream!

I’ve mentioned before that stove-top coffee is common in Hong Kong eateries, but what of other non-espresso machine methods? Well, if you’re clueless like me then this is a good opportunity to explore pour-over/syphon/aeropress and other coffee methods through Black Coffee – a perennial pop-up coffee “bar” hailing from Melbourne. The coffee isn’t “creamy” like an espresso, and it’s not because there isn’t any milk, but you seem to get a cleaner taste with a greater range of flavours. This can be a good or bad thing depending on your taste preference – I liked the “Boa Vista” for its fruitiness, but not so much the “Geisha” with its tart aftertaste.

You can find Black Coffee at Outré Gallery from now until this Sunday, 22 April, where you can also admire various artworks (bunnies by Kozyndan!) on display.

Black Coffee

In Sydney, 19-22 April 2012 at Outré Gallery, Shop 7, 285A Crown St (near cnr of Campbell St), Surry Hills NSW

happy coffee-ing!

Mademoiselle Délicieuse and Monsieur Poisson attended this event as  guests of Black Coffee and Lisa Pham.