For years, Seattle was considered the nation’s coffee capital, but now the action has moved further south to Portland. Or has it? Several trusted coffee professionals seem to think that New York is currently the U.S. epicenter of coffee culture. Previous NYC coffee experiences haven’t proven that point, so I took a closer look during a May visit to Manhattan.
Quality aside, some things jumped out at me about the Manhattan coffee scene:
1) Everybody knows that real estate is at a premium in New York, so several of Manhattan’s best coffeehouses don’t even have seats, just rails or bars. Given that, people stand, grab a quick coffee or espresso drink and get on with their day.
2) Time is also scarce in Manhattan, so you won’t find many people sitting for hours at a time hacking away on their laptops, you’d see in L.A. Not that NYC coffeehouses provide much motivation to do that. Chelsea’s Café Grumpy recently outlawed Wi-Fi altogether to increase customer flow. Only two coffeehouses could be considered linger-friendly: the original Alphabet City outpost of Ninth Street Espresso and Kaffe 1668, the sharp new two-story coffeehouse in Tribeca. They both have Wi-Fi and comfortable seats and don’t mind if anybody lingers. Imagine that.
3) In Portland, Billy Wilson’s BARISTA recently earned acclaim at least in part for offering coffee from multiple roasters, but that’s already been ingrained in New York since 2005, when Café Grumpy opened in Brooklyn. The Manhattan Grumpy currently carries Novo and Counter Culture Coffee and Plowshares Coffee Roasters. This multi-roaster attack has to be due to the lack of space. Coffeehouses don’t have enough room to roast, so they might as well cast a wide net to source the best beans available. Of course this approach might be changing due to increased market penetration from roasters like Stumptown, which set up shop in Brooklyn and is opening a Manhattan coffeehouse in the Ace Hotel.
My coffee tour began at Abraço, an East Village coffeehouse that pizzaiolo/coffee lover Anthony Mangieri recommended during my 2008 visit to his stellar
2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
- Pingback: Manhattan Coffeehouse Tour and Impressions on June 10, 2009
- Pingback: Ethiopia » Spreading the Word in Real Time on June 30, 2009
excellent writeup of the NY coffeehouse scene. While there’s certainly a lot of excitement, it takes another level of commitment to be excellent. In LA, I’d say the only players are Intelligentsia, LA MILL, Spring for Coffee, Caffe Luxxe, and Espresso Profeta, with the latter two pretty far behind in the zeitgeist of the coffee world.
Nice survey of some of the top spots and I definitely agree with the overall sentiment. NY has finally taken off with more new cafes than any one person could possibly cover, but the overall level of quality is still slightly lagging behind other top cities. As Greg Sherwin recently noted on The Shot and you note here as well, NY is still mostly lacking it’s own brand of roasters with the rare exceptions like Gimme! and recent non-native expansions/transplants like Stumptown. It seems like the glass half empty is that the quality still isn’t on par with what one might expect from a culinary epicenter like New York – a really fantastic cup of coffee is still hard to find. The glass half full is that NY is finally reaching a singularity point – new, quality cafes are opening so fast that its starting to get become difficulty to actively complain about the coffee – you can usually find a good cup without working too hard.
If you’re in the West Village, Jacks Stir-Brewed, on 10th St. Next to the fire house at Greenwich Ave. is the best coffee. So good!
Late to the party, but the saving grace of Midtown is Zibetto, on 6th near 56th.
I hadn’t heard of Zibetto. Good tip. Thanks.