ST. ALi Coffee Roasters - South Melbourne
Cafe · South Melbourne ·
Artisanal coffee & inventive brunches in a trendy warehouse
Artisanal coffee & inventive brunches in a trendy warehouse
"An influential early-2000s café that helped transform Melbourne’s scene by popularizing specialty, traceable coffee and local roasting, with a founder who began roasting his own beans and inspired many other operators to do the same; the venue is credited with elevating provenance awareness and sparking a broader obsession with quality coffee in the city." - Nina Caplan Nina Caplan Nina Caplan has been writing about the arts, wine, and travel for over 20 years. Her wine and lifestyle columns appear regularly in Club Oenologique, The New Statesman, and The London Times's luxury magazine, Luxx. She is the author of an award-winning travel memoir steeped in wine and history, "The Wandering Vine: Wine, The Romans and Me," which was published by Bloomsbury in 2018. She has followed her interests all over the world, from climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge and searching for Edo (19th-century Tokyo) to eating her way around Montreal and exploring the vineyards of Champagne. She is also a travel and wine consultant and an occasional podcaster. A lifelong Francophile and fluent French speaker, she lives between Burgundy, France, and London and has overflowing wine cellars in both places. She is working on a book about France. * Guild of Food Writers Drink Writer of the Year 2020 * Fortnum & Mason Drink Writer of the Year 2018 and 2014 * Louis Roederer International Food & Wine Writer of the Year 2016 * "The Wandering Vine" was Fortnum & Mason's Debut Drink Book of the Year 2019 and Louis Roederer Wine Book of the Year 2018 * Author of "The Gourmet London Restaurant Guide" * Former editor of Metropolitan, the trilingual magazine on Eurostar * Former features editor of Time Out London Travel + Leisure Editorial Guidelines
"Representatives from this trailblazing Melbourne coffee company stress that Australian coffee culture “really encompasses the whole of hospitality,” highlighting table service, real food and genuine niceness; staff memories also suggest many flat white drinkers historically asked for drinks extra-hot, positioning the flat white as a hospitable compromise between tradition and individual preference." - Erin Meister
"A pioneer of the city’s Third Wave coffee movement that began as a small roaster and cafe in 2005, founded by a figure often called the godfather of Melbourne coffee; it pairs one of the city’s standout breakfasts with a diverse roster of roasted beans and a strong focus on coffee craftsmanship." - Tristan Lutze
"Some of our favorite things to do in Melbourne like grabbing a coffee at ST ALi."
"It’s hard to imagine the third-wave coffee scene in Australia—and throughout the rest of the world—without St. Ali. Since its opening in 2005, the South Melbourne coffee shop has served as the home base for a series of offshoot businesses dedicated to mindfully sourced coffee, in a city that's now well regarded as ground zero for the global craft coffee movement. So you’d be remiss not to hop in to one of their cafes and grab a “magic,” a small cup that’s filled with steamed milk poured over a double ristretto, now Melbourne’s signature drink. Like any great cafe, though coffee is only half the story: There's great food coming out of the kitchens, too. The menu changes depending on the season, featuring dishes like creme brûlée pancakes, or the totally addictive “dirty” poached eggs made with roasted bull horn peppers, smoked paprika mousse, crispy potato noodles, and a padrón pepper sauce." - Krista Simmons
