Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

from VirtualTourist.com

Egidio’s flaunts its history and pedigree to all who walk in its front door. Maps of obscure Italian subregions and a giant newspaper clipping about the founders cover the walls. It’s one of The Bronx’s old Italian bakeries, one of those places that Connecticut and Long Island and Jersey families still get their big basket of cookies from for Christmas, even though half the cookies they get are not good, nobody ever liked them, and they never get eaten, but you get them because that’s what you always get at Christmas.

My dad first took me here last year when he came up to visit. We had a few pastries and coffee at the formica tables. The nice Mexican ladies behind the counter took care of us. The cannoli are good, the banana boats are good. The coffee was okay. The bakery, like the leftover half of those dry, weird-tasting cookies at Christmas, retains a place in his heart born more of tradition and memory than the quality of its products. I came again the other day with Mario on our Arthur Avenue adventure, and it was the same thing. It’s really too bad, but the bright side is that this is the absolute worst part of the Arthur Avenue food experience, and it still rates an “Okay.”

Egidio’s Pastry, 622 E 187 Street, The Bronx

Going to The Bronx’s Little Italy is an adventure. For Italian-Americans in the tri-state area, it’s also a tradition. The neighborhood of Belmont, known simply as “Arthur Avenue” for its main drag, is packed with decades-old stores established to serve the local Italian population early last century. No-nonsense bakeries (bread ONLY) and legendary pastry shops (sweets ONLY) are found on every block. Meat markets display a horror movie’s worth of butchered carcasses in the windows (some still with fur!). Pizza places serve the best pizza in the city (not an exaggeration). And at the Casa della Mozzarella, you can buy magnificent knots of fresh mutz scooped right out of a big bowl of salted water — biting into a fresh chunk sends whey squirting all over the place. You could stock a whole pantry with one visit to the many Italian imports shops.

I’m in love with this place. This is my family’s New York “old country” — my father was baptized at the cathedral on 187th; my great-grandmother paid $75 a month for a 3-bedroom apartment on Crotona Av, just 5 blocks to the east. As much as I would love to go on and on about the neighborhood, this is a blog about cafés and so I’ll cut this short with one exhortation — that you, and every New Yorker, discover this time capsule of this city’s Italian heritage.

The star of the show is the Café al Mercato, a corner stall in the Arthur Avenue Market, built in 1940 by the hamfisted authoritarian LaGuardia administration to give neighborhood street vendors a place to make a living and feed their families. Of course, if they hadn’t been banned from the streets to begin with, the city wouldn’t have had to spend taxpayer money on such a building, but I digress. The café is no-frills — you order your food and coffee at the counter and bring it to your table and consume it. If you get the espresso, do yourself a favor and get a single shot and down it immediately at the counter. For $1.50, you have never had a sweeter, silkier pop of joe.

Plan to spend a sunny summer afternoon here. Stock up on caponata, soppressata, and giant cans of olive oil. Hear some Italian. And if all the shopping bags you will without doubt acquire start to wear you out, stop by the café at the back corner of the Arthur Avenue Market to refuel.

Café al Mercato, Arthur Avenue Market, 2344 Arthur Avenue, The Bronx

This sweet cluttered bakery in Nolita is everything French — even the service is, shall we say, laissez faire.

I knew that even though my feet may require amputation from pounding 30-plus blocks of frozen sidewalks (I have to remember to wear two pairs of socks!), it was worth finding this place where they cram the patrons into what should rightfully be the trash room. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a profoundly charming trash room. Glazed red brick walls, austere busts of unknown (to me) Frenchmen, and a jumble of tables and chairs make for a really nice place to sit. Unruly but plain and therefore dignified plants guard the alley-view windows.

The snotty waiter took our order — Mario had his usual espresso, but I spied a café au lait at the top of the menu and went for that. In between a regular coffee and a latte, it’s for times when you just can’t decide. I also ordered an almond croissant.

This dense, oven-fresh almond croissant might be one of the top ten best pieces of pastry I have ever consumed. The light pressure exerted to tear it in half (to share with Mario) forced the butter that saturated the pastry to well up in the indentation left by my thumb. It left my fingers pleasantly slick and marzipan-scented. This is such a “Good Thing.”

I would have ordered another coffee, which was very good, but the waiter was too busy not waiting on us. As it got later we both had to get back to work and chased him down for our check.

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Ceci Cela Patisserie, 55 Spring Street (also 166 Chambers Street), Manhattan

Mon-Sat 7am-10pm | Sunday 8am-8pm

Mario emailed me today — “IT’S A WINTER WONDERLAND!” Maybe down in the calm Village. Here on bustling 23rd Street, just days before we’re scheduled to move to Bushwick, it’s a cesspool of gray-brown slush. It could have been a fun day for Niko, who has never played in snow, but by the time I found him a clean patch of fresh snow to play in we were both frozen. He did his business in the median between Broadway and 5th on 23rd, and tried to play in the snow but his paws got numb and he began to trip.

I think instead of even trying to get on all my gear and meet anyone for coffee, I’ll just sit here in my disaster of an apartment and drink my own coffee among the boxes.

Yes, the holy trinity of keeping warm: a fresh cup of coffee, unadulterated heavy cream, and a pot of sugar.

Sorry, but one can only gain entrance to the exclusive Cafe 2 by first purchasing a ticket to MoMA. Luckily, Luis’ job gets him free museum tickets for up to 6 companions. So my grandma and her roommate of 15 years, up from Florida babysitting my baby cousin in White Plains, came down to the City to scratch their heads at art with us. The Edvard Munch exhibit was taking up some gratuitously-large- for-Manhattan space on the top floor — you can see the sky through the glass roof! — so we started there. Wandering through the labyrinthine halls of museums gets me cranky real fast — I’m not at all the type to spend a whole day staring at depressing Le Corbusier city plans from the 1920s. So imagine my uncontainable delight at discovering the museum held a slick little bistro-y café right there on the second floor!

We were all having problems ordering from the menu because everything sounded and looked so good — huge glass deli cases hold the colorful food for all to see. Every item in the place, from the tables and benches to the flatware and salt shakers, was designed by what the Cafe 2 website assures me is an important designer.

We each got one of the paninis, which are served with a generous glob of caramelized onions. The sandwiches were the perfect size, had beautiful ingredients, and tasted great with the really good coffee. Here’s the part I’m confused about — is it good that you have to bring your coffee cup up to the refill station to get more? I mean, it’s free, sure…but it seems at best a pain and at worst dangerous to have tens of untrained patrons stumbling through a crowded café with hot coffee sloshing this way and that. Don’t worry, I heroically made it back to the table three times with my coffee, though maybe more of it was in the saucer than stayed in the cup.

Even if you don’t eat, do visit MoMA — after all, the Rockefellers went through the flamboyant trouble of demonstrating how deeply they care about art by bulldozing their mansion and building a museum on the site. The least you can do is ooh and ahh at their generous sacrifice.

Cafe 2, 11 West 53 St, Manhattan

Wed-Mon 11am-5pm | Closed Tue | Fri 11am-7:30p

The reason I go to Caffe Reggio is, unfortunately, not the coffee. Or the service. Also, the furniture…not so comfy. No, I go because my friends ask to meet me there. But I like going. The location is great, right on MacDougal and 3rd in the old heart of the Village. The coffee (they only have espresso — if you’re looking for regular coffee, you get an americano) is passable, nothing to write home…or a great review…about. And you might die of old age waiting for someone to wait on you — at least your back will hurt from the springy wire-backed chairs by the time you consume what you ordered and pay.

But look up from your meh beverage: Reggio’s interiors are a time capsule from at least 1927, though it’s possible the sagging tin ceilings, among other ancient bits and pieces, could have been there from whatever long-forgotten business previously occupied the storefront. Dark, heavy, and ornate wood benches, marble-topped tables weathered by the forearms of a million java-juiced patrons over the decades, and dim lighting evocative of old gas lamps make the place feel frozen in time.

Reggio inside (from the café’s website)

But what’s with the creepily bottomless sugar bowl — can that hold an entire five-pound Domino bag? Yet it’s reassuring at the same time — at Reggio I’ll never run out of sugar, like I do when I have to rely on unreliably-filled tabletop sweetener boxes.

But the centerpiece of Reggio’s decor is its magnificent and massive old espresso machine, sadly no longer in use. A Herald Tribune snippet from 1945 wants us to “look again, what’s that nickel-plated monster lording over the room? That’s the espresso machine, that’s the business-getting partner of the firm…[it] represents the life savings of Dominic Parisi, it’s his pride, his occupation…” Ol’ Dominic’s macchina must have made some killer espresso in its day — good enough to keep the “firm” around long after the founder’s own crema faded.

Dominic Parisi and his espresso machine (from the café’s website)

The greatest thing about Caffe Reggio is I know that when I pound the table and speak a political opinion far too loudly for the comfort of my neighbors, that I am following in the footsteps of a long line of fiery Greenwich Villagers of eras long past.

Overall rating is just “Okay,” but the place has to be seen and experienced at least once. My recommendation is get a latte — the milk will hide the mediocrity of the espresso. And sit up straight.

Caffe Reggio, 119 MacDougal, Manhattan

I was first here months ago, one day when Mario suddenly recalled its existence and steered us over. This place is saturated with the feeling of the 1920s (or at least as I imagine it) — the streamlined pre-deco radiators, the octagon-tiled floors, and the period iron and wood of the storefront itself. The huge plate-glass windows make the place a scintillating box of sunlight on almost any day. The quaintness of it all, even the tight arrangement of the tables and chairs make me happy just opening the door. There are always newspapers and magazines strewn about random tables, just in case you forgot your own and plan to stay a while.

The coffee doesn’t stand up to the atmosphere, unfortunately. It’s very acidic and has an odd flavor — nothing a bunch of cream and sugar can’t drown out but not the most pleasant experience. It is, however, served with a little piece of chocolate on the saucer, a touch I appreciate even when I really don’t feel like mucking my mouth up with a fat wad of candy. In January, Mario got me a piece of cake to celebrate my 27th birthday — chocolate mousse. He promised he’d eat more than he did and I of course ended up eating most of it. It was great but once we left it felt like a bomb had been dropped in my belly.

I once had a ham and cheese croissant that was pretty good.

It seems the place is owned by Israelis — there are burekas and shakshuka on the menu, and often a few of the patrons are speaking Hebrew.

It rates only a “Decent” because while the atmosphere is great, the food is pretty good, and the service is also great, the coffee is frankly crap and this is a café blog. It’s also a place I’d consider a “Haunt” if I lived within a block, if just because it’s so nice to just sit there and read the paper in the sun.

Café Angelique, 49 Grove Street (also 68 Bleecker St), Manhattan

There are a lot of these guys around the city, manning little carts and kiosks, serving us all sorts of delicious halal cuisine and their own special coffee brew. One day I was heading for an appointment on 28th and Madison, and as I turned the corner I saw a Pakistani guy shut away in his tiny coffee and bagel cart. It was freezing — around 20 — and I could smell his coffee from down the block, so I went up to him and asked for one.

“Two sugars?”

“Yeah, please.”

“Milk?”

“Cream if you have it.”

“Yes, here you go.” He popped the top onto the paper cup and handed it to me. I snatched it greedily, more for the warmth — which had suddenly become its own commodity worth paying for — than the beverage itself. “One dollar.”

I handed him the dollar and ambled west on 28th Street. That was the best cart coffee I had ever had. Better than any $4 piece of burnt Starbucks crap, I was convinced. It could have been the bitter cold that contributed to my appreciation, but I swear that little guy took time and care in crafting the cups of joe that came from his diminutive trailery hut.

I’m rarely in that area anymore, so I’m not sure if he’s still there. I don’t know how he did it for a buck.

28th and Madison Av, Manhattan

It’s not just because I used to live so close to Irving Farm that I often insisted on meeting there. Irving Place is one of those city lanes small enough that you don’t have to dodge much traffic to cross it, but still public enough that you can stroll down it and not be glared at as an intruder by the residents. Well-kept brownstones, one of the oldest purpose-built parking garages I have ever encountered (1929!), 1950s coops, and numerous neighborhood businesses coexist on this 6-(short )block street. The crown jewel of Irving, of course, is the peaceful and immaculate Gramercy Park, which generously lends its name to the surrounding neighborhood (doubtlessly farther from the park than most key-holding residents would prefer). A stroll around the periphery of the park is one of my favorite detours when I’m in the area — sure, it takes 5-10 more minutes to get where you’re going, but all those ornate towers and mansions, steeped in history, make it worthwhile.

In the heart of the minihood of Irving Place is Irving Farm, on the garden level of a very old house. Walking in feels like a hug: the warm woods and décor put me at ease. An ease begging to be shattered by a big ass cup of Irving’s astoundingly good house coffee. It’s so good I don’t even put sugar in it, just cream (half and half in this case; it’s all they have). You can get the coffee served in a ceramic cup, which I like because I feel like I’m not being rushed out — instead of “here’s your paper cup, now scram” it’s “have some coffee, stay a while.”

Irving has a great little pastry case, some of which I noticed comes from Balthazar (that means it’s good). They also have a decent menu of salads, sandwiches, and soups. And though the prices on the food are a bit steep, the staff hands it to you with a smile.

Overall, Irving Farm is what I’ll be calling a “Haunt” — a place to visit time and again.

Irving Farm, 71 Irving Place, Manhattan

M-W 7am-11pm | Th-F 7am-12am | Sat 8am-12am | Sun 8am-11pm

Mario and I were sitting in the small back room of a Soho patisserie the other day, critiquing the croissant we were sharing, when I blurted out: “We should do a café review blog.” He said something like “uh-huh, sure.” The thing is, once a week we go to at least two, many times three, and sometimes four different places to get coffee and maybe a pastry, and an occasional lunch. We café hop. I’m not sure there are very many people who have been to as many cafés in their whole lives as we go to in three months. So why not share what we find? And here we are.