There is a corner of Reservoir Street in Surry Hills where Sydney’s love affair with the flat white quietly began — and from that small, unassuming café on a gentle slope up from Central Station, the ripples have spread remarkably far. Single O, the coffee roaster and café that has called that address home since 2003, has become something of an unlikely ambassador for Australian café culture on the world stage.
The brand, originally known as Single Origin Roasters, was one of the pioneers of Sydney’s third wave coffee movement when it opened more than two decades ago. What started as a roastery-cafe hybrid — spinning customers out with fruit-driven blends and a focus on single origins at a time when stale Italian packet coffee dominated the market — has grown into something much larger. Today, Single O operates locations across New South Wales, Queensland, and Japan, with its CEO Mike Brabant noting that Australia continues to play a meaningful role in setting global coffee standards. He credits the country’s thriving independent café scene — rather than any dominant chain — as the force that built that reputation.
The drink most associated with that reputation is, of course, the flat white. Broadly defined as a white coffee made with steamed milk and minimal foam, it sits somewhere between a latte and a cappuccino — less milky than the former, less frothy than the latter — and puts the flavour of the espresso front and centre. As Brabant describes it, there is nowhere to hide in a flat white: if the coffee isn’t excellent, or the barista isn’t skilled, you will taste it.
That quality benchmark may be precisely why it has travelled so well. By 2015, Starbucks had added the flat white as a permanent fixture on its US and Canadian menus, having watched it gain traction in specialty cafés across the country. In China, the flat white has been adopted under the Mandarin name ào bái — literally “Australian white” — reflecting its uptake even in markets where tea has long been the dominant beverage of choice. Shanghai, which had more than 9,500 coffee shops as of 2023, surpassing major international hubs like New York and London, regularly features the flat white prominently on menus. In Tokyo’s more minimalist coffee boutiques, the milk-to-coffee ratio of a flat white is treated with a seriousness that would feel familiar to any Surry Hills regular.
The origins of the drink are themselves a source of some Antipodean rivalry — New Zealand maintains it invented the flat white, though various Australian accounts point to the 1980s, with Queensland often cited. Whatever side of the Tasman you come down on, the drink’s ability to cross language barriers and embed itself in wildly different café cultures speaks to something universal in its appeal.
Back on Reservoir Street, Single O continues to push the envelope. The Surry Hills café introduced what it describes as the world’s first batch brew bar, as well as innovations like the Freepour Coffee On Tap system, all while its roasting operations have expanded to a dedicated facility in Botany. In early 2026, Single O was named to The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops list, a ranking compiled through more than 350,000 public votes and the evaluations of over 800 professional judges worldwide.
For locals who have been grabbing their morning cup from that corner of Surry Hills for years, none of this will come as much of a surprise. They have always known the flat white here is something worth making a detour for — the rest of the world is simply catching up.
Published 24-July-2026
