It's insufferably overwrought ("despite their tattoos and often rough-and-tumble venues, baristas think fine coffee should be right at home in a fine restaurant" -- you don't say...), but this piece does profile some of the best coffee joints in New York, including Café Grumpy and Gimme Coffee. Naturally, all but one are in Brooklyn.
"Can't understand how anyone abides that stuff.""How so?" Mason unable not to react.
"Well, it's disgusting, isn't it? Half-rotted Leaves, scalded with boiling Water and then left to lie, and soak, and bloat?"
"Disgusting? this is Tea, Friend, Cha,-- what all tasteful London drinks,-- that," pollicating the Coffee-Pot, "is what's disgusting."
"Au contraire," Dixon replies, "Coffee is an art, where precision is all,-- Water-Temperature, mean particle diameter, ratio of Coffee to Water or as we say, CTW, and dozens more Variables I'd mention, were they not so clearly out of thy technical Grasp,--"
"How is it," Mason pretending amiable curiosity, "that of each Pot of Coffee, only the first Cup is ever worth drinking,-- and that, by the time I get to it, someone else has already drunk it?"
Dixon shrugs. "You must improve your Speed…? As to the other, why aye, only the first Cup's any good, owing to Coffee's Sacramental nature, the Sacrament being Penance, entirely absent from thy sunlit world of Tay,-- wherby the remainder of the Pot, often dozens of cups deep, represents the Price for enjoying that first perfect Cup."
"Folly," gapes Mason. "Why, ev'ry cup of Tea is perfect…?"
"For what? curing hides?"
I'm with Dixon. And J.S. Bach, for that matter. Which is why I'm thrilled to discover that NYC's best espresso bar has a blog. No, really, I'm as reflexively disdainful of Williamsburg as any hipster-hater, but I'm telling you, Gimme Coffee is the shit. Check out their blog for in-depth coverage of all things caffinaceous.
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