Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

A fellow Bushwicker recommended Dora’s Coffee Shop and Creperie just across the borough border in Ridgewood, Queens, and since Bushwick has a notable deficit of…let’s say European food, I was determined to make the two-mile journey down Myrtle Avenue and check the place out. Ridgewood is only a different neighborhood politically — it’s just a continuation of Bushwick to the northeast, the main difference being half of it didn’t burn down in the 70s. It also has a significant Polish population, as opposed to Bushwick’s Puerto Rican majority. How this spawned a crepe café, I’m not sure, but no matter, Polish-staffed Dora’s serves up crepes so hot they will melt the end of your plastic fork.

The crepes are cheap, and they make them right there at the counter in front of you. I was there with my whole Miami crew — Yury, Liz, and Luis walked the two miles with me, complaining all the way of the humidity and distance. Everyone but Luis had iced coffee, which we all for some reason found overly sweet even though it was only sweetened by what we each added. I had a cup of regular hot coffee after my ham- mozzarella-mushroom crepe, and it was soldily good joe.

The atmosphere was less than pleasant, not because of what was in there, but because of what wasn’t — it felt too sparse. Maybe it could do with one more row of café tables to make it a bit cozier. Some art on the walls would help, too.

I give it an overall thumbs up, even though the sugar and butter crepe we shared for dessert didn’t have sugar inside and the sugar on top was powdered as opposed to granulated… not a complete disaster. If it weren’t so far, we’d certainly go back often. Since it closes bafflingly early, it’s only a lunchtime place.

Dora’s Coffee Shop and Creperie, 60-50 Myrtle Avenue, Queens

Open until 8pm, 7pm on Sunday

When I think of Israel, I don’t think of chocolate. Max Brenner aims to change that with a blitz of new stores in the New York area. Two are already open: one in the East Village, and one on Broadway around the corner from Union Square. The atmosphere is chain-like — it looks like a fancy Starbucks, which doesn’t exactly make me feel like hanging out. But then I think it’s geared more toward people looking for a meal, not someone with a laptop who wants to nurse a coffee, as evidenced by the cluster of tall bistro tables shoved in the corner almost as an afterthought.

We ordered our standard — two double espressos. Disappointingly, they came served in two giant paper cups, a trend I will never understand or accept or forgive. They were a hair worse than okay, meaning not passable. And since we were, after all, in a chocolate shop, we got a warm chocolate cake thingy, which came in the most ridiculously huge and wasteful cardboard packaging — we were sitting right there at a table, give us a damn plate! Once we figured out how to remove the idiotic box, I cut into the cake, took a bite, and shrugged. No big deal. I mentioned it sort of tasted like ham, but not in a totally bad way, if that makes any sense. Mario thought it was fine.

I’m not surprised about the coffee. We’re talking about a chain from a country where the national coffee drink is Sanka shaken up into a gallon of milk. Ugh. But the chocolate should have been trans-frickin-scendant for all the buzz given this place, and the Willy Wonka décor. Not to mention the 2-inch cake was $7.00. A resounding “feh.”

Max Brenner, 841 Broadway, Manhattan

Mon-Thu: 8am-11pm | Fri-Sat: 8am-1am | Sun: 9am-11pm

Too cool for you.

This afternoon Yury IMed me: “Wanna go to the Archive?”

me: k

We make our way from the house, on the fringes of Bushwick’s Bodega Belt, past the huge parking lots, parks, and housing projects that serve as the borderlands between my hood and the spooky industrial areas beyond. This part of East Williamsburg is lazily called Bushwick, or “West Bushwick” by the geographically challenged (Bushwick is SOUTH of East Williamsburg). It’s fine; it’s more my neighborhood than Bedford Avenue ever will be theirs.

It doesn’t take long after crossing Flushing to realize you are in yet another one of New York’s unique ethnic enclaves: everyone is vaguely ugly, thin, and pale, with hairy, bony forearms and pants too tight for their concave asses. They amble around the vacant lots and filthy warehouses on their wobbly chicken legs — thighs not much thicker than their calves. But their clothes and hair are fabulous.

In an eerily intact line of old brick tenements on Bogart and Grattan Streets is The Archive, a coffee and DVD rental shop (hipsters like to rent their DVDs in person. why? dunno). I have been here probably 10 times now, and each time I’m far short of impressed. The drip coffee is good, and that’s pretty much all I’ve had except for an okay chai and some iced tea. The employees are usually very nice, but a few of them are jerks visibly annoyed by my presence at the counter, oppressing them with my requests for their wage slave labor. Or maybe my hair isn’t shaggy enough…even though I cut it myself…

The furniture is cool, I like their front wall banquette, even though the shag cover is totally vile, matted and crusted with filth. It has really big windows that would be pleasant if they weren’t swathed in wire mesh. You can plug in your computer, but don’t try to do any substantial work here — the wireless connection is slower than molasses. My Verizon card is faster, let’s put it that way. All this, and the prices go up seemingly every week. Oh, and the music sucks. Sucks.

Believe it or not, they have good bagels. Just authentic enough to be chewy but not authentic enough to hurt your gums. They have good oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies, too. I haven’t had the espresso…wait a second, brb

back — yeah, it sucks. The asshole currently running the counter pulled it way too long — it fills half a small cup of coffee. Tastes like crap. He slammed it down on the counter — “here you go brah, catchya later.” *shudder*

Okay, if you live in the immediate hood, it’s the only place to go. Wyckoff Starr is friendlier, cuter, tastier, but it’s in a total wasteland. Maybe one day soon some benevolent, far-sighted entrepreneur will save us Deep Bushwickers from the indignity of being scowled at by Kansan immigrant poseurs as we order a latte.

Bashful Yury struggles to work at The Archive.

The Archive, 49 Bogart Street, Brooklyn

Mon-Fri 7am-11pm, Sat-Sun 10am-11pm

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