Your Guide for Craft Coffee
I’m sitting in a café in Lower Manhattan and a barista has just checked on our table- for the third time. Do we need any more coffee? Is everything tasting alright? Can we take those dishes out of your way? This is an uncommon occurrence in American coffee shops. In New York’s financial district, it’s shocking. But then again, there’s a lot of things surprising about Black Fox Coffee….
Cabell Tice shocked the competitive latte art world when he won the Latte Art World Championship Open at CoffeeFest, NYC as a first time competitor. We sat down (digitally) with the reigning champ and asked him a few questions about latte art, being a barista, and where to drink coffee in Bean Town.
The Big Apple. Gotham. The City that Never Sleeps. Whatever you call it, New York has emerged as a premier coffee destination. In previous years New Yorkers were notorious for drinking their coffee cheap and fast. But today New York is no longer a johnny-come-lately in the craft coffee scene. Just a cursory glance at the New York Times coffee map reveals one doesn’t have to walk more than a few blocks to get a decent cup in lower Manhattan or Brooklyn. For someone plotting an NYC cafe crawl, the choices can be overwhelming.
Thankfully, everyone I polled was unanimous: go to Everyman Espresso in SoHo first.
For the past seven years Everyman has been churning out specialty coffee in the lobby of the Classic Stage Company. The postage stamp sized bar has redefined most baristas’ concept of personal space, but the quality of the drinks and the service has drawn more than just theater lovers to this East Village cafe.
Perhaps Everyman’s biggest mark on the NY coffee scene has been owner Sam Penix’s iconic knuckle tattoo, which the New York Times featured in this ground-breaking article. Now, fittingly, the tat adorns the front door of the new Everyman Espresso in SoHo.
When Sam Penix and right-hand man Sam Lewontin opened up Everyman SoHo in 2012, they wanted to design a bar with …
CoffeeFest NYC 2013 has come and gone but baristas and coffee professionals across the world are still in withdrawals from the mass amounts of caffeine consumed March eighth through the tenth at the Javits Center in Manhattan. As always, a lot of the activity focused on the competitions and their was no shortage of entertainment for fans of competitive coffee preparation.
Peregrine Espresso won the America’s Best Coffee House competition. When I saw their name on the competitors list, I knew if they could recreate their cafe experience they would be hard to beat. …
Wandering around New York City I can tell you some coffee shops got it and some shops don’t. It’s not unusual to see a shop’s awning read, “Pizza! Tacos! Coffee!” Would you trust a shop like that? Me neither.
There are some shops here in NYC that do live up to the hype and reputation. I visited one such shop recently called Sweetleaf Coffee and Espresso Bar.
In truth, Sweetleaf Coffee hits shop excellence on every level. First, they use UNIQUE high quality espressos from Ritual, Sight Glass, and …
