Best Coffee in Melbourne: Laneway Espresso, Specialty Roasters and Cafe Culture

Melbourne is widely regarded as the birthplace of Australian specialty coffee culture and the city that introduced the flat white, the magic and the carefully calibrated single-origin espresso to the national cafe lexicon. The CBD laneway cafe scene, particularly Hardware Lane, Degraves Street and the surrounding laneways between Collins Street and Flinders Lane, is the most concentrated coffee destination in the country, with dozens of espresso bars operating in converted lanes that have become a defining feature of the Melbourne urban experience. St Ali on St Kilda Road in South Melbourne is one of the most influential cafes in Australian coffee history, credited with establishing the third-wave ethos in Melbourne in the early 2000s. Proud Mary in Collingwood is a benchmark specialty roaster. Market Lane Coffee, with multiple Melbourne locations, operates a celebrated program of single-origin coffee sourced directly from farms around the world. Fitzroy and Collingwood are particularly active specialty coffee suburbs. The Specialty Coffee Association of Australia uses Melbourne competitions as its annual benchmark events.