Is Latte Art a Waste of Time? Why Presentation Matters in Speciality Coffee
I was watching Saturday Kitchen over the weekend when the guest, actor and comedian Ben Miller, jokingly described himself as a barista too. He explained that he owns a coffee shop and has made coffee there before.
The show’s presenter, Matt Tebbutt, asked whether he could do latte art—whether he could pour a little heart into the top of a coffee.
Ben said he could, sort of, although he admitted that he wasn’t particularly good at it. Fair enough. Latte art is harder than it looks.
Matt’s response was to laugh and question why anyone would bother doing it in the first place. After all, you’re only going to drink the coffee and ruin the pattern anyway.
It was only a brief, jokey exchange, and perhaps I’m taking it far too seriously. But it stuck with me.
I’ve heard versions of the same argument throughout my career in speciality coffee. Latte art is silly. It’s pretentious. It’s a waste of time. Why spend ages making a flat white or cappuccino look pretty when someone is about to drink it?
You’re perfectly entitled to think that. Nobody needs a swan floating on top of their flat white.
But it seemed a particularly strange argument to hear on a programme devoted to cooking.
Matt Tebbutt is an experienced chef who has appeared on Great British Menu and ran an award-winning restaurant for many years. Saturday Kitchen regularly features brilliant chefs who care enormously about how their food is presented. They don’t simply cook something delicious and drop it into the middle of a plate. They think about its colour, composition and appearance.
We accept that presentation is part of the experience of eating in a good restaurant. So why should coffee be any different?
We Drink Coffee With Our Eyes First
Latte art isn’t just about drawing a pretty picture on top of a coffee.
To pour good latte art, a barista needs to steam the milk properly. It needs a smooth, glossy texture, without large bubbles or a separation between hot milk and thick foam. The barista then needs enough control to combine it properly with the espresso and pour the pattern.
A heart or tulip doesn’t guarantee that the single origin espresso underneath will taste delicious. Equally, a coffee without latte art isn’t automatically a bad coffee.
But when I walk into a café and see a barista consistently pouring good latte art with beautifully textured milk, it gives me confidence. It suggests that they have made a lot of coffees, practised their craft and paid attention to the details.
If they care about the milk texture and presentation, there’s a reasonable chance they also care about the espresso recipe, the grinder, the freshness of the coffee and the cleanliness of the equipment.
The latte art is the part of that work the customer can see.
What Good Latte Art Tells You About a Barista
Making great coffee involves lots of small decisions.
The coffee beans need to be ground correctly. The espresso needs to be weighed and timed. The milk needs to be steamed to the right temperature and texture. The cup needs to be clean, and everything needs to come together quickly enough for the drink to reach the customer at its best.
Pouring a simple heart at the end doesn’t take several extra minutes. For an experienced barista, it becomes part of the natural process of making the drink.
It’s a finishing touch.
Since opening Bond Street Coffee in Brighton in 2014, I’ve watched a lot of baristas learn how to make coffee. Latte art is often one of the skills they’re most eager to master, but it can only really come once they have learnt how to texture milk properly and pour it with control.
It takes practice. Usually, quite a lot of practice.
That doesn’t mean every coffee needs elaborate latte art. I certainly don’t think baristas should spend so long attempting an intricate swan that the coffee goes cold. The appearance of a drink should never become more important than its taste.
But a well-poured heart tells the customer: I cared about making this for you.
Isn’t that exactly what good chefs are trying to communicate when they present a beautiful plate of food?
Why Latte Art Matters at Our Brighton Coffee Shop
At Bond Street Coffee, our independent speciality coffee shop in central Brighton, the coffee we serve has already been through a long journey before it reaches the cup.
It has been grown and processed at origin, selected and imported, and then roasted by me at Freda Coffee. In the café, our baristas carefully dial in the espresso, weigh each shot and steam the milk before serving it.
Latte art is only the final few seconds of that process, but it brings everything together.
It isn’t the most important part of the drink. The quality of the coffee beans, the espresso extraction and the texture and temperature of the milk all matter more. But presentation is still part of the experience—particularly when a customer is paying for a coffee made by a professional barista.
Whether it’s a flat white, cappuccino, cortado or latte, we want it to look inviting when it arrives at the table.
Coffee Is Food Too
Perhaps this is the bit that bothered me most.
We still have a tendency to treat coffee as something separate from food—as though it’s merely a hot, caffeinated liquid to wash down breakfast.
But coffee is an agricultural product. It has been grown, picked, processed, exported, roasted and brewed. A huge number of people have contributed to it before it reaches the customer.
When a speciality coffee shop puts care into sourcing, roasting, brewing and presenting that coffee, it isn’t doing anything fundamentally different from a good restaurant carefully preparing and plating its ingredients.
Latte art might be temporary, but then so is every beautifully presented plate of food. The fact that we’re about to consume something doesn’t make its appearance meaningless.
It’s part of the pleasure. It creates an expectation. It shows care.
And yes, it makes the coffee look a little prettier.
I think that’s reason enough.