SCRIBBLEboxing » NYC

List of NYC coffee establishments I visited 12.19-22.2010

Slay — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:54:37 +0000

Fort Defiance
Think Coffee
Ost Cafe
Bluebird Cafe
Roasting Plant
Joe the Art of Coffee
Cafe Pedlar
Culture Espresso
Stumptown
Everyman Espresso
Ninth Street Espresso
Prime Meats
Black Gold Records

[There are lots of pictures from many of them here.]

What We did in New York This Weekend

Slay — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:53:56 +0000

Wednesday
11pm Drive to Pittsburgh, arrive 2am. Check into the Radisson.

Thursday
5:30am Wake-up. Call for a cab. Leave the car in the Radisson lot and get dropped-off at the Megabus stop. Get on the bus to NYC. Read all of Allaploosa.

2:30pm Arrive in Manhattan. Subway to Harlem. Check-in at Michael Duncan’s place. Change clothes and head downtown to TKTS. Long TKTS line, at least 300 people. Discover the “plays only” line – only 8 people. No good shows available, though. Call 2nd Stage – Chad Deity tickets for $79. Acacia gets a discount code online through her magic iPhone. Call 2nd Stage – buy Chad Deity tickets for $53.

5:30 Sit down at Cafe Blossom. Eat lots of vegan food disguised as regular food. Enjoy it a lot.

7pm Get coffee at Joe the Art of Coffee. Yes. Yum.

8pm Sit down to watch The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, a play about professional wrestlers. It’s bawdy.

10:30pm Hail a cab back to Harlem. Sleep.

Friday
8am Wake-up, get ready for running and coffee.

9am Acacia runs, Matt reads Eating Animals and drinks coffee.

11am Leave Harlem, check into the Four Point Sheraton in Chelsea.

1pm Lunch at John’s Pizzeria – without meat. Miss the meatballs and feel conflicted about it. Shop for cheese at Murray’s. Walk to Film Forum.

2:50pm Breathless at Film Forum. Acacia wants the Jean Seberg.

5:30pm Dine at Le Singe Vert. Order only vegan food, despite the rich French foods on the menu. Grow to like beet carpaccio. Walk to the Joyce Theatre. Pick-up will-call tickets.

7:45pm Talk to Sai, from OSU.

8pm Watch American Document (2010) with the SITI Company and the Martha Graham Dance Company. The SITI Co. look pretty thrilled. Laugh, cry, gasp, etc. Leon’s really funny. Russian guy is really cool. Enjoy the parts where the actors dance and the dancers act. Intermission.

9pm Watch sketches from Chronicle, a classic, anti-war Martha Graham piece. The dress is really cool. The dancing has verve and is viscerally affective. How do they do that? How do they move so quickly?

10pm Walk to Billy’s Bakery and take cupcakes and ice-box cake back to the hotel. Watch parts of Men in Black and eat sweets. Acacia sleeps. Matt reads, looks-up and sees that å is on TV. Watch Viggo. Sleep.

Saturday
7am Wake-up in hotel. Grumpy.

8am Wake-up in hotel. Grumpy.

9am Wake-up in hotel. What time is it? Grrrr. Grumpy.

10am Oh crap, we better get up. Acacia, get-up and take a shower. Grrrrumpy.

10:30am Get up. Shower. Pack masterfully.

11am Exit hotel. Walk through Chelsea to the Ace Hotel and Stumptown Coffee. Realize again how special Luck Bros is. (Luck Bros sometimes has Stumptown’s beans and they do a better job with them tan Stumptown. I recommend a cubano from Lucks, made with Stumptown’s Hair Bender espresso.

12pm Return to hotel for bags, take subway to the Public. Get student tickets (Don’t ask.) for the Andrew Jackson show.

1pm Off to Brooklyn.

1:30pm Check-in to Stephen Slaybaugh’s place. Drive (!) to some bar in Red Hook to watch U.S. vs England and eat pizza (without meat) and hummus. Tie.

5pm Go to the pier to see the Statue of Liberty and the fishermen.

5:30pm Stop by Baked for Josie’s free cupcake. Buy treats for the megabus-ride back to Pittsburgh.

6:30 Drive to Williamsburg and Blue Bottle Coffee. Admire their incredible, Japanese slow-drip machines. Struggle over a choice of bean. Relish the cappuccino, and even kind of like the chilled coffee that Acacia chose. Yum. Buy XXXXXX beans. Walk around Williamsburg to gawk at the hipsters and their tiny mustaches.

7pm Dinner at Lodge. Yum. Ask about local, sustainable food sources. Get a story about the tables in response. Order the free-range fried chicken (with macaroni and cheese and a tomato-cucumber salad) and cross your fingers. Order hush puppies too. Meal starts with lobster roll sliders and charcuterie plate. Great meal, great atmosphere, a great time with Steve and Josie.

8pm Exit Brooklyn to the East Village. Visit Ninth Street Espresso on 10th street. Closed. Visit å on 9th street. Closed. Visit Abraco on 7th street. Closed. Dammit. Visit Starbucks and use the bathroom.

9:30 Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. WOW. Great show for 60 minutes. Good show for the last 30 minutes. Marvel at Martin van Buren‘s five minute non-verbal twinkie gag. Amazing. [If you can, see this show. Seriously.]

11pm Visit Aroma Espresso. Closed. Okay, we get the picture. Back to BK.

12am Acacia reads Outliers while Matt empties his RSS reader. Give in and eat some of the stuff from Baked. Sleep.

Sunday

7:15am wake-up. Acacia: “What time is it?”

9am wake-up. Matt: “What time is it?”

10am Abduct Acacia and leave to get coffee. See a cab and think “Let’s have some fun!” Cab it to south Williamsburg and Oslo Coffee. Get Thor. Cab back to Red Hook.

11am Meet Stephen to go have brunch at Buttermilk Channel. OMG cheddar waffles. The tall stack is REALLY tall. (They served Gimme! coffee, too.)

12:30pm Get sandwiches at Caputo’s Fine Foods for the trip home. Speck. Walk to downtown Brooklyn. Get cannoli and twist cookies at Court Pastry.

1:30pm Return to Stephens to play FIFA World Cup and watch the World Cup (Germany vs Australia). Pack masterfully.

3pm Depart for the 2.

4pm After much confusion about lines, get on the Megabus for the ride to Pittsburgh. Worry about the car.

4:40pm Start writing this blog post.

5pm Eat the rest of the stuff from Baked.

7:15pm Eat sandwiches.

7:56pm Watch Acacia play Doodlejump.

7:57pm Realize this blog post is going to tedious pretty quickly from here on out.

12:43am Return to the car in the Radisson parking lot.

1:48am Re-enter Ohio.

3:51am Arrive at home. Set alarm. Go to sleep.

NY Times: New York Is Finally Taking Its Coffee Seriously

Slay — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:10:47 +0000

There’s a great article in the NY Times about the current renaissance of coffee taking place in the city that never sleeps. (I guess now it really doesn’t ever sleep.) It includes a comprehensive list of places with good beans and fancy machines, as well as a few choice cuts that are good information for anyone curious about telling the best from the rest.

The elaborate designs in the cappuccino’s foam at Third Rail Coffee in the West Village aren’t just to show off, but are a sign that the barista properly steamed the milk so that it holds its form …

These shops use only beans that have been roasted in the past 10 days (though some say two weeks is fine), so the flavors are still lively …

The beans are ground to order for each cup …

Today, most of the chains use about seven grams of ground coffee for a two-ounce shot. Espresso pods are filled with around five grams.

Baristas at the best places in town, like Bluebird Coffee Shop or Joe, tamp down between 19 and 21 grams. Often the espresso is even more concentrated because it’s pulled “short,” with less water, so that the final volume is a thick 1.5 to 2 ounces.

As I said, the list of shops is very comprehensive, here I’ll cut-and-paste a few that I know and love: ABRAÇO, CAFÉ PEDLAR, LA COLOMBE TORREFACTION, GIMME! COFFEE, JOE (AKA Joe: The Art of Coffee), NINTH STREET ESPRESSO, STUMPTOWN COFFEE ROASTERS.

Incidentally, I had a pour over cup of Ndaroini, a Counter Culture bean from Nyeri, Kenya today. (At Luck Bros, of course.) Definitely rated in my top 3 cups ever.

Oct 2, 2008

Slay — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:44:31 +0000

Oct 2, 2008

Slay — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:50:14 +0000

Oct 2, 2008

Slay — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Oct 1, 2008

Slay — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:00:28 +0000

Oct 1, 2008

Slay — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:23:08 +0000

Oct 1, 2008

Slay — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:35:45 +0000

Bryant Park

Oct 1, 2008

Slay — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:05:17 +0000

Yes, Joe, again. I’m sitting under a tree, it’s keeping me dry. This is one of the nicest moments of my trip. I could almost stay here forever. It perfectly suits my unbearable mood.

From now on, when I’m here and it’s raining, I’m comin’ straight here.