My workplace features one of those drip-filter coffee pots that were last seen when the Olympics were televised from Korea, or in McDonalds before they went all McCafé. Think bulbous glass and acrid smell. Early in the morning a pot is brewed (a dreadful word that, somewhat accurately for this example, conjures up an image of witches around a cauldron for me), and it then sits, slowly condensing on a hotplate all day, emitting an increasingly burnt odour as the hours pass. I regard this item and its contents the way the general population regarded lepers a few hundred years ago. My co-worker, however, normally drinks a cup or two of the stuff every day, and what’s more, she dilutes it with hot water from the urn so that more taste must be endured for the same caffeine hit. I never could understand why she drank that filthy stuff and seemed to enjoy it until one day she mentioned that she used to live in New York.
Americans love their drip coffee. It’s one of those cultural things that outsiders just don’t get. Well, I just don’t get it. Not too long ago it was the only coffee you could get in America, poured scalding hot into an off-white mug where it formed a little foam of bubbles that seemed to have an almost green hue in the right light. How brown liquid could have green bubbles perplexed me, but it was clearly witchcraft and best avoided. But recently, ironically thanks greatly to Starbucks, espresso coffee has made it’s way into mainstream American consumption, although drip coffee retains a special place in American hearts.
I never understood Starbucks either, until I drank American ‘espresso’ and realised you need pumpkin chai flavouring to get that stuff down because it is so goddamn awful. It’s ridiculous when you consider that a disturbingly large proportion of the world regards Australia as a quaint place where people ride kangaroos to work when they’re not lazing on the beach, yet in reality most urban Australians expect, and get, top-quality espresso coffee regularly. Over the Pacific in that beacon of modern consumerism, the United States of America, they may be closer to Europe, but European café culture clearly had some trouble at border immigration and was turned away.
So, as a dedicated lover of seriously good coffee (we are commonly known as ‘snobs’), it was with some trepidation that I approached my recent two-week jaunt to the States. That is until my mother, thanks to her voracious appetite for newspaper reading, clipped a one-page article from the Sun-Herald on the 7th of June entitled “Baristas worth every bean” and gave it to me. It was a guide to New York cafés, written by an Aussie, Monica Glare, who had relocated to the Big Apple. In it she outlines the history of America and coffee and notes the difficulties she has had finding good coffee in NYC, before setting out seven cafés scattered around the city that serve real espresso coffee to make an Aussie smile.
But now I ask you to pause a moment and reflect on brave Monica, this noble explorer, and the unfathomable sacrifices she made in her mission to discover good coffee in New York and bring this knowledge to Australians. The cup-sized horrors she must have endured make me shudder.
So, article in hand, my companion and I visited three of the suggested New York cafés in a fact-checking mission, and now bring the good news to you, dear reader.
Think Coffee, 1 Bleecker Street, NoHo
A nice welcoming layout with a few couches scattered among the tables and chairs, this is the first place we try. Coffee is actually decent and thoroughly drinkable, although it needed a little sugar to mask some bitter undertones. Also kinda milky and a bit weak.
Joe, 141 Waverly Place, West Village
Just down the road from Washington Square Park, the beating heart of Greenwich Village, Joe is tiny with an awkward arrangement of too-small tables. Luckily it makes up for this with great coffee, and some star-spotting to boot. On one damp Sunday morning Phillip Seymour Hoffman sat at the table next to me with his son; then, when he left, Lonny Ross (Josh from 30 Rock) came in and sat at a table opposite. But back to the point of this – the coffee was damn good. This, coupled with divine almond croissants, kept me coming back to Joe repeatedly.
La Colombe, 319 Church Street, TriBeCa
In this café we gingerly floated the idea of a flat white (totally alien concept to Americans) and the barista was very obliging and clearly dedicated to his craft. He produced two superb flat whites, stronger than the coffee at Joe, with perfect temperature and foam density and volume. We also provoked an extended discussion involving staff and customers about what the heck a flat white was, and why Aussies are just so bizarre.
En route to New York, we stopped in San Francisco, but sadly had nothing to guide us. After one ‘latte’ so dreadful I could barely drink any of it I resolved to give up coffee until New York. Then one night at dinner the couple at the table next to us noted our accents and struck up a conversation. The inevitable ‘What do you think of the US?’ question came up and we gave the safe answer of many positives countered by one negative – the bad coffee.
Our new friends then directed us to Bluebottle Coffee, our San Fran saviour. Their flagship café is at 66 Mint Street, between 5th and 6th Streets just south of Market Street, but there’s another outpost at the Ferry Building and on the top floor of the SF MoMA. Their ‘siphon pot’ coffee puts a science nerd twist on the traditional drip coffee idea, which is pretty cool, but for normal people the espresso is terrific and the staff are so intensely tattooed that it’s like hanging out in some kind of modern body art gallery.
Images courtesy of Ballistik Coffee Boy on Flickr
Hey Justine,
Great article, just landed in NYC last night from Sydney and on the search for a decent flat white. I used to live here and have never really found anything decent so will be keen to try your suggestions.
Cheers
Rob