Stop an American on the streets of Manhattan and ask them what the best thing to come out of Australia is.

There's a good chance that, alongside old tropes like Crocodile Dundee and AC/DC, the answer will be coffee.

Australian coffee culture, perfected and refined in recent decades, is taking hold in the US, with scores of "Australian-style" cafes springing up.

What's the coffee order of choice in New York? Increasingly, an "Aussie flat white". ( Getty: HRAUN )

"It's safe to say Australian coffee is among the best in the world," says food critic Pat Nourse, who chairs the Oceania voting panel for the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards.

"I think it has been for some time — we've just been a bit slow to wake up to it at home."

But how did a colonial outpost with tea-drinking British roots become internationally recognised for its coffee?

Italians and the culinary void

From a coffee crop on the First Fleet, to the Victorian goldfields and thirsty American soldiers stationed in Australia during World War II, the brew has long had a presence in Australia.

But, like many of Australia's culinary successes, the triumph of Australian coffee is inseparable from immigration.

In the wake of World War II, Italian immigrants started to bring coffee machines to Australia.

"The introduction of espresso coffee … is nostalgically remembered by many as a key watershed between a drab past and a cosmopolitan present," historian Andrew May says.

Coffee maker Achille Gaggia's espresso machine, with its spring lever mechanism (rumoured to have been inspired by the piston engine of an American Army jeep), was a huge step forward for the flavour of coffee.

This machine was a game-changer for coffee drinkers around the world. ( Getty: Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis )

It was first brought to Australia in the late 1940s.

"The sensationally innovative espresso machine [made for] a much more controllable process resulting in a less bitter brew with a creamy top that was a taste sensation," Professor May says.

The espresso bars that began to imprint themselves across Sydney and Melbourne had an appeal that went beyond the Italian migrant communities operating them.

With their new decorative styles, they attracted an aspiring social set of Australian bohemians, who were joined by teenagers, bored of the old-style milk bars and steak pubs.

Australia — despite a strong current of anti-migrant sentiment — was uniquely placed to embrace this new coffee culture.

Italian immigrants brought a lot to Australia, including a taste for coffee. ( Getty: Dennis Rowe/Stringer )

Urban sociologist Emma Felton says Australia was "a culture in the process of defining itself, as distinct from its colonial origins".

"It provided freedom for experimentation and adaption, unleashed from the constraints of traditional European, say Parisian coffee culture," she says.

That set Australia apart from other Western nations, whose culinary traditions were rooted in France.

"Australia stole a march on the other anglophone nations [with coffee] because the basis of our coffee culture was Italian, and southern Italian at that, rather than French," Mr Nourse says.

"France has done many great things for the food and drink of the world — coffee is not one of them."

A unique social fabric

By the 1960s a small mix of bohemians, teenagers, and migrants were gathering around coffee spots.

"But Australia was slow to let its hair down," Professor May says.

"Coffee was also still pretty expensive in the wake of World War Two. In 1951 [it was] 10 times more expensive than tea."

Hipsters moving into the inner-city changed Australia's social fabric in favour of coffee. ( Getty: Carsten Schanter/EyeEm )

Dr May says the gentrification of inner-city suburbs over time helped fuel coffee culture.

"There is certainly a clear nexus between rising café culture and the discovery and commodification of the Australian inner city by middle-class migrants from the suburbs," Dr May says.

"It was a slow burn really, and the next wave of inner-city rejuvenation and gentrification from the early 1980s, and a new wave of Bohemian cafes, gave coffee another significant boost."

Australia's relatively high standard of living also played a part; people had the time to enjoy a cuppa as a social experience, and the access to the capital needed to open cafes.

"A level of affluence enabled people to start small businesses and establishing a cafe didn't require training," Dr Felton says.

From Fitzroy to Albury

Even low-rise regional towns like Albury have a taste for a high quality cuppa. ( Getty: zetter )

By the 2000s coffee shops, mostly independently owned, had become a very competitive scene.

That, Mr Nourse says, kept the quality high.

"Everyone's pushing for a better cup," he explains.

"This place uses only single-origin beans, that mob has cups made by a local ceramicist, the place over the road has its own cow — you know the drill."

And the trend stretched beyond the hip streets of inner-city neighbourhoods.

"It's not just the chin-stroking inner-urban Instagrammer enclaves," Mr Nourse says.

"I had a flattie in Albury the other day that was twice as good as anything I saw in a fortnight in Italy.

"The entire island of Manhattan has fewer really good places to get a coffee than Canberra."

Smoother, lighter, and overseas

Not Melbourne, or Sydney. This is Ruby's Cafe in New York. ( Instagram: littleruby )

In recent years, the aroma of Australian coffee has drifted overseas, filling the streets of major towns and cities.

"There are lots of Australian-owned cafes in many major cities — New York, Paris, London, Berlin, San Francisco to name a few," Dr Felton says.

"Our baristas are sought after and it's not unusual to see the Aussie flat white on menus in cafes overseas."

Ruby's, which in 2001 became one the first Australian cafes in New York, is now a hospitality group with 10 locations across the US.

"Australian coffee is obviously technically very different in terms of preparation and execution than American-style coffee," says managing partner Tim Sykes.

"Generally, the roasts used by Australian venues are much smoother, lighter and more caramel compared to a lot of US coffee which is a much darker roast and more bitter.

"There has been, especially in the past five years, a much greater appreciation for quality espresso coffee.

"A greater exposure to it has led to a greater understanding of what quality coffee is — Australian-style."

And Mr Nourse, who's seen "flat whites on menus everywhere from Xi'an to Valparaiso," says other local culinary cultures might join in.

"The wider world is also waking up to the fact that we eat and drink really well in this country, despite the fact that our restaurant and cafe scenes are relatively young," he says.