Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

It could be motor oil if it weren’t so thin.

The late 70s were a depressing time in New York, by almost anyone’s account. That’s why when Dean and DeLuca opened in the up-and-coming SoHo district, it must have been a bellwether moment for those New Yorkers who wanted more than what they could get at the corner store in those days. The market has always conjured not just images of luxury in food, but luxury in food shopping — a significant achievement.

But it’s now 30 years later, and we’re all a lot more sophisticated as a society. I remember the first time I walked into Dean and DeLuca a couple years ago — I shrugged. Okay, it’s nice. But I had seen better as a teenager in stripmalls in suburban South Florida. Sure I’d love to having something similar in Bushwick, don’t get me wrong — but as blow-your-mind, overwhelm-your-senses gourmet food scenes go these days, Dean and DeLuca doesn’t slice the speck quite so thin anymore.

So no surprise for me when I go to their café on University Place and get stared at like I’m a waste of time, have my total mumbled to me and my change all but tossed into my hand, and god forbid I or Mario ask a question — you’d think we were the most annoying people on the planet. Their sandwiches are consistently dry; I usually stop eating something bad after two tries, but for some reason I gave the mavens of gourmet three separate chances. The ginger cookie is really good — chewy and well, maybe a bit too much extra sugar on top but dunked in a latte it’s awesome. Too bad the lattes suck. The drip coffee is a bitter abomination and the espresso…

The espresso needs its own paragraph. It is the worst espresso I have had so far in New York City. The Archive in Bushwick, whose espresso is the absolute pits, at least has a pathetic attempt at crema on top. Dean and DeLuca’s product is served to you in a thin paper cup with the lid on — a good thing for the help because by the time you pull it off and realize the contents are jet black with no crema whatsoever, you are safely in the seating area on the other side of the wall. The only good result of gulping down such a horrific beverage is that I got a facial muscle workout from all the wincing I was doing. It’s one frickin ounce of liquid, and I still couldn’t bring myself to finish it.

Otherwise, the place is pretty okay for what it is — a nice old Village space for hanging out with your computer, especially if you’re a student at a nearby university. The ceiling is an awesome sight, and the floors are a beautiful, crumbly old mosaic. And any café is incomplete without marble-topped bistro tables. The location is perfect. It’s just too bad about the, uh, products and service.

Dean and DeLuca, 75 University Place, Manhattan

Mon-Fri 7am-10pm | Sat 8am-10pm | Sun 8am-8pm

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

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