Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

We normally avoid this place even though it’s half a block from Mario’s office. Actually, maybe because it’s so close — it’s packed to the gills with NYU students on their laptops. The place even has a 15 foot long power strip so EVERYONE can plug their computers in. We walk in, look for two empty seats, and usually finding none we head out. This time we stopped in, only because it was cold out and we wanted to warm up.

I ordered two espressos as Mario sat down. I also grabbed a peanut butter cookie and a cider. I brought all our goodies to the table, and knowing Mario would be offended by the irreverent light blue of the demitasse cup I held in my left hand, gave him the off white one in my right. Sure enough, when I mentioned I liked the blue, and it was like my light green set at home, he said something to the effect that he thought it too untraditional. Standard white for him, thanks, or a slight variation thereof. In keeping with ettiquette, Mario showed off his refined “Saddam pose” — holding the cup by the handle while making sure to keep his palm-down hand underneath.

The espresso at Think is good. The cookie, not so good. Very, very dry; not very peanut-buttery. Cider, fine. It’s a cool place to hang out, but everyone else thinks so, too, so good luck grabbing a spot.

Think,  248 Mercer Street, Manhattan

Mon-Fri 7am-12am | Sat-Sun 8:30am-12am

Mario heard about The Tasting Room from another publication last week, so he recommended we stop by, since we were in the EV anyhow to eat at Momofuku (drool). It’s not in the greatest location for aesthetics – I hate looking at the institutional primary hues of municipal playgrounds — and being more LES than EV, it’s not terribly convenient either. But if you’re an espresso buff, this is your place.

Yeah, it’s $2.50 a pop and the barista takes for, like, ever to serve the coffee, but it’s not without justification. With each order, she put the hopper on the grinder, and ground the beans fresh for our shots. She loaded the grounds and delicately placed small, thick ceramic tazzine under the spouts to catch the syrupy reddish strands of espresso. Then she actually served us at the table, demitasse spoons balanced on the little saucers, water on the side.

I haven’t had better espresso in Manhattan — this place is a close second only to Café al Mercato in The Bronx. It was bursting with a bittersweet orange undertaste I have never experienced, and I think it was all the barista’s doing — she mentioned that she had just been “tinkering with the blend.” She really knew her stuff, and was generous with information about the startlingly gorgeous machine: its origin, who made it, its inner workings and even its cost.

This is a place where a real art is practiced and perfected, and it should not go unnoticed. The warm, diminutive space (which actually seems to be primarily a wine tasting bar) should be a destination for the espresso obsessed.

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The Tasting Room Wine Bar & Cafe, 72 East First Street, Manhattan

Mon-Fri 7am-12am | Sat-Sun 9am-12am

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

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

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