Food And Drink

My Starbucks bugbear: the coffee just sucks. Really badly.

America and Japan are among the world’s leading innovators. So why can’t they figure out a cup of coffee? Caffeine fiends everywhere are in uproar because Starbucks revealed it uses insects to colour food and drinks. That wasn’t a typo. Insects.

But that doesn’t bug me. I’m in uproar because Starbucks is Starbucks, and, as such, its coffee tastes like run-off from an overweight Greco-Roman wrestler’s spandex after a spin class.

Continue reading "We sure hope your morning coffee tastes better than this" »

If you walk down the streets of Paris on any weekday morning, you will see sleek, perfectly coiffed Parisians clutching a briefcase or designer handbag and perhaps the newspaper.

If you walk down any Sydney street, you will see a very different picture. You will see hundreds of people clutching a takeaway coffee cup. Now inside those containers there could be a skim capp, a chai latte or even a soy mocha, but what I see is calories. A lot of liquid calories that few of us really need.

Now, before your morning coffee fuelled brain goes into a fury at the thought of the dietitian ruining your Monday morning by taking away the one indulgence of the day that gets you through the office doors each day, yes, it is true that there are some health benefits associated with drinking coffee.

Continue reading "Your large coffee could be making you rather large" »

The first thing that got me excited about Christmas was how seamlessly it merged with Halloween.

One day the supermarket was full of orange, pumpkinesque loot buckets, and the next day it was filled with every Christmas symbol you can think of made from marshmallow, alongside special edition Toblerones that were tall enough to enter Grade 1. I fancied sucking on a marshmallow Madonna but they seemed to be sold out.

Next year, I will be marketing edible, orange snowmen carrying Australian flags and wearing cute little “I Luv U” T-shirts. These will be targeted at those who want to get into the spirit of things from October to February but also want to keep their spending on useless special occasion crap under control.

Continue reading "Our incredibly annoying but heartfelt Christmas traditions" »

Editors’ note: Clint Hillery is an Australian sommelier who has worked in and established some of Sydney’s leading wine bars.

Top 10 wine crimes

1. Regions
People demand wines from the premium regions of the world such as Burgundy, Central Otago & Champagne until they see the price tags. These are the “tyre kickers” of the wine world, the people that test-drive a Porsche but buy a Charade.

Continue reading "The 10 worst things Aussies do when ordering wine" »