NYC Spots & Thoughts Spring ‘23

GOODDD MORNNINGGG FL USA !!! I am drinking ice water, I am listening to New Order, I am thinking about NYC one month later. This last week was pretty busy, and as we get steadier I have less and less time to write. But hey! It’s another notch on the ladder, we’re achieving our Q1 2023 goals and with that expenses go up! We are doing more events, more merch, more great stuff! Keeping it moving keeping this whole cafe rolling. Today let’s focus on the trip.

March 6-10th We Visited NYC

My partner dakota (@voidheart.tattoo) is a fantastic tattoo artist, and had a guest spot at a studio there and was booked every day. So while he tattoo’d and paid for the trip, I ran around and tried coffee. There were way too many spots I didn’t go too (shout out ‘til death, lacabre, coffee project, etc.) BUT! I did go to about 2/3 a day for 5 days; meaning I have a healthy amount to write about.

My “goal” for the trip was to study how cafes wrote their menu. I imagined they’d have sharp and simple menus, which is something I want to do at Tetherball with our second iteration at the one year mark. So let’s take it day by day and think about what we had and what folks there are doing.

Day 1

We got in late. First stop was right next to the hotel, Blue Bottle. I visited the first location in NYC back in about 2015? (first as far as I know) Under the rockefeller center. That spot was doing only pour over black coffee, which was hugely interesting to me at the time, and though today they do more cream and sugar they’ve still got an interesting menu and good black coffee. What stood out to me this year was just very matter of fact menu names. Like the chicory infused cream and sugar cold brew, “new orleans style” iced coffee; Or the Iced latte shaken with molasses and cane sugar, the “Shakerito.” These were black text on skinny pale wooden boards, easy to read and to the point. Classic.

After Blue Bottle we kicked around and went in to The Bean. From the name alone this screamed 2nd wave chain. Sure enough we found a ton on google, but ours had a massic acai bowl menu painted on their bar, and big colorful chalkboard drawings of celebrities for their specials. For example their frappes were “frozen mona lisa”’s. This paired a memorable face to a classic drink. Despite the hugely overstuffed menu, the iconography made it readable. Huh. Well, I got a muddy drip and an almond croissant. Which ruled. That’s one thing I love about big cities, the bread. It was getting pretty late, so if Blue Bottle was uninterested in us, this place wanted us gone haha. But we bugged them for the bathroom and went back out in to the cold. My hot bland drip coffee and my stale croissant were delicious. Time for bed.

Day 2

The next morning we went to Sunflower Gramercy for breakfast, which is worth noting because a lot of restaurants have nice machines and good coffee. This isn’t much of a coffee shop and there’s not much to note on the menu. I had a vanilla latte. it was okay!

We dropped stuff off at the tattoo studio and walked down the road to Coffee Fest NYC . It just so happened to be going on the same week! Host of the podcast Keys to the shop (@keystotheshop) happened to be judging the latte art competition there and got us tickets we couldn’t afford. (awesome pod interviewing folks in the coffee industry and giving advice on running cafes). Coffee fest is a tradeshow, so it’s focus is on introducing brands to cafe owners. I first went to Coffee Fest LA as a shop manager, and realized I didn’t really belong there haha. This time I made a few connections, and hopefully you’ll see those down the road at Tetherball.

If I could shout out just two people from Coffee Fest NYC! @hazelicious_inc is doing really good almond milk alternatives with a super clean hazelnut milk. @espressostateofmind is putting together events to help baristas find career paths in the industry. I’ve been following them for awhile and It was great to meet a few members in person.

After the fest, we still hadn’t had enough coffee so we went to Do Not Feed Alligators. Roasters @touchy.coffee recommended we check it out, and it was a really cool spot. In my opinion there’s some disconnect around the overall design, but I get the feeling in a year from now it’ll be beautiful when it’s had some time to evolve. The menu has a few weird quirks haha, I’d recommend you just go to their website. For one thing they have a canned food menu, stuff like grilled octopus and fish. For another thing they have milkshake machines on bar to froth “frappes” which are essentially frothed milk over iced espresso. I had a $10 drip that was alright. But hey, their strongest element might just be the carefully crafted book store. Inspired and art focused stuff. It’s weird man, I really love it. And I think they’ll get better.

After that we had dinner, freezing our hands off and insisting we walk everywhere, we ended up at a tiny Milkbar on the lower east side. If you watched the documentary series “Chef’s Table” 20 times like me, you might love Milkbar since it was a pillar of that series. I’d been twice already, and I really don’t have kind things to say about the culture. But what I will say, is they still do the best cereal milk I’ve ever had. which means the corn flake ice cream and cereal milk lattes are still bomb. Even with the worst espresso I’ve had in NYC haha.

Day 3

The next morning we bee lined for Blankstreet , which was the current chain hoping to “be the next starbucks in nyc.” Last time we were in town it was Gregorys. Let me describe both of their approaches as I saw them. Blankstreet went for a bunch of tiny builds. Dozens of them just in Manhattan with a bold off green color and razor sharp aesthetics. A couple of transplants in London to legitimize their highbrow goals. That said, many of these were so small you couldn’t really get in and sit, but honestly it was an A for me, tasty and tight menu. It was paired down to the essentials and it all looked good! Who cares if there are seats? Gregorys went for personality, their mascot being a person and their builds having some seating and some yelling out orders. I think Blankstreet had the quality and aesthetics needed to replace the bux, but Gregorys had a more authentic atmosphere. I don’t think either of them were really outstanding, but personally I prefer blankstreet if it means I have a better easier drink. I ordered a small hot pisatchio latte and it was pretty good, but I think it needed something on the back end, which is how I ended up with our spring special the toasted pistachio cardamom at tetherball.

After we got coffee we went for breakfast at MUD NYC, a place I’d been recommended about 6 years ago and never forgot. My head barista at the now under new management Crucial Coffee in St. Augustine, told me “if you go to one place for coffee in new york, go to MUD. In retrospect I can see why he loved this place, a real hole in the wall with delicious and affordable food/coffee. Warm cozy wooden, his kind of place. My bagel with cream cheese and tomatoes came with a free drip and it was all amazing. That said we had to shuffle and duck through an old house to get there, and be made fun of for our blankstreet cups haha. “the enemy” our server said of my cup, which was great. He apologized and I was like no no I get it totally fine.

My partner got to work and we went to the museum at FIT, where we saw some exhibits on fashion and design. A few blocks away was Variety Coffee, which reminded me of a new york bagel counter if it was all espresso based. It was a bit gaudy, the menu was big and brass, the ceiling was high and curved. The line moved like a train and I had a good time watching the barista run bar. The place was packed but we snagged a two seater between some meetings happening for espresso and drip. It was pretty good but I think we were both already wired haha. I liked the simple and effective coffee bar format, It makes sense that their menu would be simple/viewable from far away. It’s nice to see a place killing it that has a format like that. It’s why our menus look the way they do.

Day 4

The next morning we bee lined for pastries at Dominique Ansel Workshop. It was freezing but the space was basically a big kitchen with a service counter so we were in and out. They had espresso based drinks and a hot chocolate with an unfolding flower marshmallow, but we were there to try the super dense croissants and cakes. We had an olive oil croissant, which checked by box for having real fresh olive oil in the city, and a square shaped rice-pudding croissant. It was super filling and the texture was unreal. I was happy to have a good fresh croissant in the city while we were there.

For coffee we visited Felix Roasting Co which has the most beautiful builds in the city objectively speaking. They’re like Victorian paintings come to life with high domed ceilings and ceramic painted walls, flowers and glass, green whites and pinks, all colors I love. We went to another one of their locations last year with a chandelier that has since closed down, they had an anaerobic on drip for $3, maybe the cheapest and best drip of the trip. Dakota got a toasted vanilla latte that was also pretty nice, I think that was his favorite latte of the trip. I get the impression Felix’s more extravagant specials are what keeps drip cheap, and that’s something I also do at Tetherball haha. We sell hundreds of specials a month and that gives me some room to really dial espresso and run drip. Felix has a lot of seating but also seem to do a lot of volume, which I’m not sure the space was built for. I guess if you’re doing good work it’ll get busy regardless of what you want.

We then went to see the empire state building, and there wasn’t much to see. There was a Starbucks Reserve on the bottom floor which seemed a little silly since it operated a lot like a museum. The coffee bar wasn’t very busy, they had lots of unique pastry and drink options but we mostly wandered around, there were lots of merchandise displays and attendants selling them. We went downstairs to a sort of dark cocktail bar. During the day it was strange to be there, like going to a busy fancy dinner restaurant with all the lights turned off at 6am. We asked a bartender for the bourbon barrel cold brew because of course we did. it tasted a lot like whiskey! It also had sugar which ruined the drink! haha. Anyways we got interrupted by a lady who said “Can I just have a vanilla iced latte.” She seemed very mad it was a restaurant/bar style system downstairs, so they told her to go upstairs. The whole thing was weird. She must have ignored a lot of attendants to get to this point.

Dakota headed to work and we took a recommendation from his coworker for a Hawaiian cafe Kona Coffee Co. They Used Kona coffee from Hawaii which is a weird situation in the states. A lot of what is brought here is blended or roasted in a way that does not highlight the coffee well : ). The classic phrase is “Oh Japan buys all of it.” I don’t know if that’s true, I just know (or am pretty sure) this is the first time I had it. The drip didn’t stand out! But! The baristas choice was a coconut latte and it was pretty good! As far as I could tell it was just coconut monin (a common artificially flavored syrup) but either way I was happy to have a coconut latte with coffee from Hawaii, I guess. Haha. They say that the experience is a big part of the flavor, and in this case that was true. It was late, the barista was nice, I had a good time.

Day 5

The next morning our mission was to try Sawada Coffee, a popup by Hiroshi Sawada who is a latte art champ and overall interesting dude in Coffee. At the time it was only open three days a week and pretty tucked away so we hunted it down just in time. There’s lots to love about Sawada from their espressoxmatcha drinks to their skateboard deck pastry case. While at first glance it’s another 2nd wave dark wood shop, it’s style and operation is very intentional. His book Sawada Coffee Style is one I’ve skimmed from a friend but really need to buy haha. It talks about how to be successful and stand out in a busy city. We got a great drip, we had a great “Tokyo style” latte with dark cane simple syrup. Happy we went.

Then we ran back to Do Not Feed Alligators so Dakota could see the space, and I could try that frappe I mentioned earlier. I read the art book titled after the shop or vice versa, and we had a seat. It’d been a fun trip, and I hope this place does well. The least I could do is go back to support them again.

After that we got some bread from the farmers market nearby, we got some taro boba and headed to the airport. I looked at but did not have a Dunkin’ Coffee. It was time to sleep.

Thank you for reading this, I always feel like there’s not enough time in NYC. There’s so much to see and so many people to talk to about it all. It feels worthwhile to go, there’s always people doing interesting things and pushing boundaries to stand up and stand out. I’m just glad i have a way to write it down now. - Elias