New York has lots of things. One of these things is coffee. My caffeine curiosities plus my thing about abstaining from the chain of crappy brown water dripping from dime-a-dozen Starbucks and the like, lead me on a nostril-opening, taste-bud-buzzing, finger shaking adventure for The Best Coffee Ever. I don’t know if I’ll ever find it, or at least I wont be able to decide it for sure. Or maybe that’s my excuse to just continue trying to find ‘the one’. For now, here’s a few small guys with bigger beans than, you know, Starbucks and the like. WAKE UP WITH SOME OF THIS!
The Bowery Co.
For ice coffee, black. Their big size is prefect for sitting on the big bench outside where you can look at the Bowery Mural – so good on a hot day. Not too much ice, either.
Think Coffee
I hate when people and places tell me what to think, so Think Coffee is just a weird name to me. It’s weird here. It looks like a cover up for something, like they aren’t sure that they are a coffee shop. I feel like they wanted to be a book store with coffee inside, except they are a book store with no books. They do have coffee inside and a cute patio so, whatever. Bring your own book.
MUD Coffee
I wasn’t so impressed with this one. And if your coffee is wrong, your whole day is wrong. I should have known with a cup that says “MUD” on it. This is like goldilocks finding coffee that’s TOO HOT. Spillage and a combo of sticky milk and sugar residue. But once you get to the bottom of the cup, you wish you had more.
Coffee (Charles st. West Village)
“No Cell Phones, Please” and no surprises here. The name says it all. Coffee. Where they have… coffee. And really cute puppies out front.
Saturdays Surf NYC
Decent coffee, decent size, decent price (about 2$, consider tip). Sip and shop. Peruse the books and the boys.
Lost Weekend NYC
This is definitely one of those Sunday Morning only kind of places. Their fancy process of slow hand drip coffee where beans are freshly ground upon order, then put in a filter, and then into what looks like a mug with a hole in the bottom. A pretty lady or good looking Aussie man chats you up and carefully, slowly, pours steaming hot water in a circular motion over the grounds in the filter in the mug with the hole in it. Out the other end comes your cup of fruity-earthy coffee. But I don’t care about their coffee so much. Not when you’ve tried their over-priced Americanos. Really small, but really worth it.
The New French
For a french press that makes you feel like a European, or you know, like people who drink over-priced coffee.
The Coffee Truck Guy
(On every street corner from 6am-noon) – the best way to spend a remotely difficultly earned New York dollar. I’m serious. Dude gets me every morning. “Small coffee with milk” I say, and “One dollar”, he responds. And then I say, “don’t joke with me”. But he’s not. And I’m happy. He even remembers my order now. Fast, Cheap, Friendly.
What up Tim Hortons!
Read more from Lauren Festa, our ex-Canadian ladyfriend living in ~The Big Apple~.
