Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

It started out as a weird day: we had resolved to do a West Village outdoor café tour, but for some reason we couldn’t find any. A friend of mine calls the WV the “Bermuda Triangle” for the ease in which one can get lost wandering its streets. Am I going North or South, up or down? Today, we kept missing all the places we knew existed, couldn’t recall their exact locations.

Finally, after 30 minutes of walking around and around, we were hot and sticky and opted for an attractive little Mexican themed café called Condesa. The waiter gave us a menu with some pricey items on it, yet when we asked if it was okay to just order coffee, he enthusiastically said “of course!” He took our orders and came back within seconds with two glasses of cold water — just what we needed right that second.

The interiors were rustic yet modern; I think it was an attempt at a contemporary Mexican look and it seemed to work. I particularly liked the art.

My regular coffee was a solidly good cup, and a large one at that. Mario says the espresso was good — from my seat it looked like it had some heavy crema on top. I would have liked to have ordered one for myself, but the waiter never came back…so when we finally saw him again I was ready to move on. We paid and took off.

Cafe Condesa, 183 W 10th Street, Manhattan

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

Now that I’m done laboring on my house, I have free time once again. Last Thursday Mario and I met up for our weekly coffee outing, and this week he wanted to venture east.

The first thing to note, of course, is that Ninth Street Espresso is not on 9th Street, it’s on 13th. The first time I passed it I was worried because I thought I was further south than I actually was. The original is on 13th between Crazy and Dead. Mario and I walked in as we passed by after mistakenly eating at the crumbling, filthy Blue 9 Burger on 3rd. This was Blue 9’s polar opposite: monochrome, clean, bright, and comfortable.

They serve their espresso triple ristretto — you get a little cup 1/3 full with thick, reddish dark coffee. I find this is the way I prefer my espresso. It’s less bitter because it doesn’t extract too much from the beans. Mario disagrees, but what does he know — besides, he’s a terrorist.

We also got a little chocolate petit four thing, and it was gooood. With this, Mario agrees. Even though this place is close to Union Square, it’s not crowded, and conversation can be made in a normal voice.

Ninth Street Espresso, 136 E 13th Street, Manhattan

7am-8pm daily

That’s right, my first Bushwick review. I was on my way home from Allen Supply (100 feet over the border in Queens) to buy spackling paste for my new money pit, when I decided to stop in at Wyckoff Starr, a tiny coffee shop at the other end of the block from the best restaurant in the ‘hood, Northeast Kingdom. The guy in front of me had apparently ordered a latte a minute or so before I walked in…and it was another 2-3 minutes before it was my turn to ask for a humble coffee. The latte did look very good. I pulled $3 out of my wallet before I ordered, just to be ready, but I wasn’t ready for the oddly cheap price of $1.10. I paid the man, dumped sugar and cream in my cup and sat down for a minute. It’s too bad I didn’t have my camera as the place is very cute, a sweet place to cheer up even the most depressed denizen of the Bushwick Jefferson-L-Stop area. I’ll update with a pic soon.

Wyckoff Starr, 30 Wyckoff Ave, Brooklyn

Cookie image yoinked from gothamist — I couldn’t be bothered to take a picture of this dump myself.

There’s a reason we call this place Shitty Bakery. Mario’s office used to be around the corner, so it was a convenient place for us to meet when I lived on 23rd. There is rarely anywhere to sit and the obscenely high ceilings – or is it the annoyingly small tables? — give City Bakery an uncomfortable atmosphere. The coffee is solidly mediocre, the staff is impatient, and the ordering setup is confusing and a bit stressful. I hear the salad bar is $13/lb — that’s some expensive grilled asparagus. In fact, everything is expensive, especially their admittedly magnificent chocolate chip cookies. These cookies are the only reason to come to this dark, automatish place crammed to the gills with students pretending to study. They’re chewy and crispy at the same time, have just enough (read: a ton) chocolate chips, and are pretty big — but they are $3, so with a coffee don’t expect to leave here without dropping $6-7. I can get lunch for that if I’m creative. Big bucks to eat in the shadow of the ever-present siodewalk scaffolding.

The cookie — a “Good Thing” — saves this place from a “Not Good at All” rating. Ugh, even their website is annoying.

City Bakery, 3 W 18th Street, Manhattan

The lesson here might be to start with low expectations. Mario took me to the Alessi store in Soho to show me just how undrinkable the espresso at their in-store café, Joe, was. The wispy shred of boy (how do his organs fit in a six-inch-wide torso!?) that manned (I use this word loosely) the machine made art of twirling back and forth from his coffee contraption to the counter where he assembled our coffee setup, and placed our tiny espresso spoons just so. I particularly liked the spoons.

The café is not comfortable — it’s too ultramodern and slick and bright and smooth to be able to chill out and drink your joe. As a store selling weird-looking Italian kitchen items and objets, the aesthetic is great. As we sat, backs rigid, on the shiny recessed benches and drank our coffee — which turned out, despite Mario’s previous experience, to be pretty good — another mop-headed attendant waited to recover our empty cups. When Mario explained he still had a little left, Mophead lectured him on the importance of drinking freshly-pulled espresso in three hot gulps. I wasn’t looking but I’m sure Mario made a face.

This is not a place to visit unless it’s bitterly cold outside and you’re within 100 feet. Or maybe if you absolutely have to have coffee and you can’t wait another 2 minutes to find another café. The espresso is fine but no better than any other decent place, the atmosphere rates our first “depressing,” and please, I do not need to be talked down to by the help.

Joe, the Art of Coffee at Alessi, 130 Greene Street, Manhattan

Mon-Fri 7am-7pm | Sat 8am-7pm | Sun 8am-6pm

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

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