Artista Barista? Why coffee art is worth their while

What even is a basic latte? How can something so intrinsically perfect be ever basic? And is basic even a bad word? These questions that might be worth answering, but not the ones we’ll be discussing today.

If you know anything about Ramit Sethi (investor, author, entrepreneur) you would know that a serious person never says no to a good latte. Experience is the keyword here. See, I come from a very coffee-centric land, Italy. But having moved to my mother’s Motherland, Australia, I got to understand how coffee is more than flavour, kick, and culture. It is love, and it is an experience. This may sound crazy, especially if you’re not a coffee drinker, but for many (myself included) coffee is love. Coffee is an art.

And artistic they do get. The baristas I mean. Just search for latte art on Pinterest or Google Images and you’ll see what I mean. Fluffy creatures made of milk, hearts, flowers, peacocks, and bear's legs made out of marshmallows.

It’s a wonderful artistic world for the caffeine-addicted, but what about your grandpa that complains that “you can’t order a simple coffee anymore”? Does he have a point?

Aesthetics impact our senses

Increasingly beautiful plates, stunning desserts, and mouth-watering burger towers are not things going “viral” just because of their aesthetic purpose. In fact, beauty is what helps us perceive food and drinks as more tasteful.

Let’s take dinnerware as an example. Food is never offered or served in a vacuum. Plates are a type of dinnerware that is frequently used to showcase food: everything from the plate’s selection to the plate’s complicated spatial arrangement is critical to the success of the foodie/restaurateur venture. It has been a long-standing custom in many civilizations to paint (glaze) flowery designs on dishes (Chinese, Iranian, etc.), and this has been shown to gift the eater a multisensory experience that enhances the perception of the meal.

More or less consciously, the idea that aesthetics and the arts could enhance the food consumption experience is nothing new. We can think about the historical dining rooms of the European privileged. Dining rooms were adorned with the best chandeliers, views, and whatnots.

A study conducted across Australia and U.K. indicated that art on lattes improved the prediction of taste (how drinkers thought it was going to taste) and the tasting experience of the milk-based coffee. Not only that, but some artistic shapes seemed to be more effective than others, depending also on the expectation of the drink. Cappuccinos for example were preferred with shapes (like stars) that indicated a certain bitterness was present in the drink. For lattes, more rounded shapes and more white foam showing seemed to indicate sweetness and were therefore preferred.

While these findings have great implications for the world of cafes, one could argue they also tell us something about the importance that art (artisan crafts included) and design have in our wider daily experience.

When it comes to nutritional experiences, visual effects may not be the most important aspect when it comes to hunger or survival, but we do indeed eat with our eyes.

Food intake is strongly connected to the development of the brain and the visual senses. Food pictures cause significant physiological and neurophysiological changes. Also, some academics have questioned if our increased exposure to images of appealing meals (commonly referred to as “food porn”) is having an influence, and whether it is unwittingly worsening our want for food (what we refer to as “visual hunger”). Indeed, viewing visually appealing food pictures can have a significant impact on neuronal activity, physiological and psychological reactions, and visual attention, particularly in the ‘hungry’ brain. But, whether this has an impact on our overall health, is a question for scientists to answer, as we are here solely to obsess over coffee.

Allow me to share some final thoughts. I love all coffee. Sometimes I even crave my good ol’ cuppa joe delivered through a scoop of instant Moccona, over a very elaborate Melbourne latte.

Cited Sources:

Latté Art Influences both the Expected and Rated Value of Milk-Based Coffee Drinks

Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation