Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

One of my favorite places in all of New York City is French Roast in the Village on Sixth Avenue. My love affair with this café began a couple years ago when I was here visiting family at Thanksgiving. Luis and I stopped in for a sandwich and some coffee, and there, among the old French advertisements, weathered marble table tops, and deco chandeliers, we decided it would be our goal to move to New York.

I have been here countless times since, for late morning coffee, an afternoon croque monsieur, or a 1am dinner with wine. The atmosphere is perfect, though I admit to a bit of an obsession with the classic Parisian café theme — it relaxes me, and has that feeling like it’s smoke-filled, but of course is not. It’s (oh this is so lame) like I imagine an actual old Paris café or bistro to be. My only comparison from experience would be the 24-hour cafés of Buenos Aires — close enough, considering they (like nearly everything else in that city) were themselves modeled off those of 19th century Paris.

It’s always service with a smile here, and they never rush you from your table — I once spent 5 hours here with a visiting friend. The only complaint is the coffee cups are small, which wouldn’t be a problem if they filled them more often. Unfortunately, the lunchtime sandwiches, like the croque monsieur (definitely a Good Thing, best I have had), are not available after 10pm or so, when they bring out the dinner menu. Small quibbles.

Good coffee, decent espresso, great food, service, atmosphere — there’s nothing this place is missing. And it’s open 24 hours! Now you have no excuse but to visit.

French Roast, 78 W 11th Street, Manhattan

Open 24 Hours

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

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