If you’re a regular at specialist coffee shops in the UK – the kind where baristas carefully weigh out your grounds on tiny hypersensitive scales and practically frogmarch you from the premises if you order syrup – you may have noticed that americanos have fallen out of favour. In these fancier coffee spots, everyone’s dependable, unfussy go-to is being eclipsed by a newer import from Australia and New Zealand: the long black.
Conducting an unofficial survey of coffee spots, I noticed nearly every barista had a slightly different explanation of the drink. “It’s basically exactly the same as an americano,” one whispered conspiratorially. “It’s a shorter black coffee, the same size as a flat white,” explained another. The final barista I spoke to just shook her head in quiet disappointment when I asked if long black was just a more pretentious way of asking for an americano.
