Cafehop.com — Café hopping in New York City

This is dumb, I know: Mario and I debated the morality of spending money in an Israeli-owned chain. Whether or not one agrees with our view on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, it’s obvious that wherever the Aroma location on Houston sends its profits, some of that money surely ends up in the coffers of the Israeli government — an organization we believe causes much harm to a people it is actively displacing. We eventually decided that since the parent corporation is in Israel that this might be set up like a franchise, with a flat franchise fee, meaning that whether or not we patronized the shop, the same amount was being sent to the fatherland. Justification can clearly be a mother of invention.

To our chagrin, the espresso is superb, and keeps us coming back if we’re in the neighborhood. I took Luis just last week. Mario himself lives across the street. There’s no way we’re going to be able to ignore this place, seductively wrapped in lusty red tilework and modern black and white accents.

One problem is the service can be rather incompetent. Mario tells me that they screw up his orders all the time, and that Friday night to Saturday night — for obvious reasons, the most competent managers are not working — it gets markedly worse. The last time I was there the cashier left Luis’ espresso off the order, only charging me for a mocha. It was a busy night, and when my order came up and the espresso was missing, the counter guy shrugged and said “she didn’t charge you for it.” You know, instead of apologizing to me and making me an espresso shot right then, which would have cost the company possibly 15 cents including labor, but bought a lot of goodwill. I’m amazed at how so many stores do not understand this.

Anyway, the mochas (and hot chocolates, I assume) are made by placing a few chunks of milk chocolate in the bottom of the cup and then pouring the appropriate hot liquids over it. It’s an attractive presentation and is cute in theory, but in practice you have to stir it for 5 minutes straight to get all the chocolate to dissolve. Not fun.

The food seems good, I had a “bureka treat”: phyllo dough “bread” surrounding hard-boiled egg, tomatoes, pickles, and tahini.

Overall, the product itself is good, but the service is bad not because of any bad attitudes but because of a total lack of competence. I’m sure it’s a problem that will be remedied eventually. The Israeli occupation of Soho is one that otherwise seems to be going well.

Aroma, 145 Greene St (Houston entrance), Manhattan

7am-11pm daily

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