Melbourne has always prided itself on its coffee culture. And the city has a secret coffee order. Go to any trendy café and order a “Magic” and you’ll immediately become part of the coffee in-crowd. The barista will then go about making a double ristretto topped with steamed milk and served in a small (150–160 ml ) cup. The Magic coffee has been around for more than 20 years, but you still won’t find it on the menu. It remains one for the afficionados.
The coffee is stronger and less bitter than the traditional flat white. The ristretto (Italian for restricted or limited) process brews the coffee with half the usual amount of water and, by stopping the process earlier, it extracts the sweeter and fruitier notes of the coffee bean while leaving behind many of the bitter compounds of a full shot. And the ratio of coffee to milk produces a “magic” combination of fuller flavour and rich texture.
The origin of the Magic coffee is subject to debate. One story is that it was created in the (now closed) Fitzroy café, Newtown S.C., around 2006, when a customer named Zenon Misko asked the cafe owner, Cate Della Bosca, to modify a double ristretto flat white. Miska is a food and travel writer and trademark lawyer who worked with the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival for nine years, and claims on his LinkedIn page to be the inventor of the “Magic” coffee. He told Delicious magazine, “We both enjoyed the drink, and I just said to her this is a really magical drink, and from that point on, it was coined ‘the magic’.”
Miska failed to trademark the Magic, though, and there are other origin stories. Some attribute its invention to the iconic South Melbourne establishment St Ali, which opened in 2005. Yet another claimant is the CBD cafe Brother Buba Budan, in Little Bourke Street. Is it a case of “great baristas think alike”?
It seems the Magic has migrated to some establishments overseas, including in the UK, where it has been available in Marks & Spencer stores since 2023. It has also popped up in the Middle East, Indonesia and Berlin, Germany. But, in Australia, it seems to be a mystery beyond Victoria.