The Avolatte, a Latte Served in an Avocado, Is Unfortunately a Real Thing

Australia has never been known for its food. It has meat pies. It has Weet-Bix. It has Vegemite. Most fare native to the land down under is at best an acquired taste, and at worst flat-out objectionable. Now, a café in Melbourne has devised arguably the nation's most abhorrent culinary creation yet, one that would've incited riots in the streets of Brooklyn, were it to have been unveiled in New York's hipster haven. Earlier this month, the Truman Cafe poured a latte in a hollowed-out avocado and called it the avolatte.

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"Combing two of Melbourne's obsessions - lattes and avo _," the café wrote on Instagram, along with a video of a barista pouring milk into an avocado-tinged shot of espresso.

If this seems like it has to be a joke, it's because it is. Or it was.

"It was actually just a joke," Jaydin Nathan, a barista, told News.com.au. "We weren't actually selling them, but then someone came in today and wanted one. I think it's ridiculous. It's literally coffee in a piece of rubbish."

But on Monday, Nathan confirmed to Australian Associated Press that the café was actually selling the creation, including four that day at the same price as a regular coffee. "Maybe some people thought it was meant to be a joke, but food is meant to be fun. Food is meant to be art," he said.

It's been a busy month for avocados, especially in Australia. Earlier in May, billionaire real estate mogul Tim Gurner insinuated on the country's version of 60 Minutes that high-priced hipster culture was responsible for the generation's inability to buy real estate. "When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn't buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each," he said.

Gurner's comments were widely maligned and, ultimately, debunked. Data suggest that the 18- to 34-year-old demographic does not spend more than other generations, and the reasons home ownership are down among millennials are far more complicated than an imaginary predilection for avocado toast.

Bizarrely, it wasn't the first time an old Australian has equated home ownership with avocado toast. In October, a "social demographer" named Bernard Salt published a screed against millennials in The Australian. It included this passage.

I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Shouldn't they be economising by eating at home? How often are they eating out? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.

It appears that Gurner was drafting off these comments, and now avocado has become something of a joke in Australia. A real estate agent in Brisbane recently offered a year's supply of avocado toast to the buyer of a townhouse priced at nearly $600,000. Nothing, though, as matched the lunacy of the avolatte, and with people now wanting to buy it—and cafés around the world copying it—we have further proof that the line between lunacy and reality has never been so blurry.

Not everyone, however, is recognizing the legitimacy of the avolatte.

Once again, Merriam-Webster proves it is the voice of reason the world needs.