« November 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
Christmas Eve on Amtrak sounds like this total nightmare scenario, but it's really kind of surreal and great and no one is yelling and no one is grouchy and I'm letting little children kiss pictures of kitties on my computer screen and sharing cookies with strangers and it's all really very midwestern and wholesome and those of you that think I am a cynic down to the bone are totally wrong.
That's all.
This week on "Cultural Anthropology & Easy Targets"...
Although I purport to have standards, I am always keen for a wacky field trip. And when Laurel—my friend here with whom I am occasionally tied in the running for Most Complainy Ex-pat American—suggested we use the free coupons we each got in the mail to go check out Far Coast coffee's new Toronto store, I was like, well, sure.
See, we both knew this was going to be a funny if not scary experience. Because aside from Far Coast opening up in a dubious area — a corner lot in boutiquey Yorkville that used to house a Lululemon and other reprehensible overpriced stores that still could not seem to keep up the property taxes — we knew another little thing about Far Coast.
A little thing they don't advertise anywhere in the store.
A little thing that might, if you really thought about it, not make you want to drink their coffee so much.
Y'see, Far Coast is an experimental new coffee retail model run by Coke.
Coca-Cola. They are selling you coffee now. Or rather, they want to. They have opened this Toronto outlet—along with stores in Singapore and Oslo—to see if Coca-Cola Blak has truly primed the palates of international consumers who are ready to take Coke-branded coffee one step further.
Far Coast's decor caught biting the styles of Beck Taxi
So when I arrive, the first thing that strikes me is that it's pretty. It's clean and polished and has nice wallpaper. But upon further examination it's a little baffling. Are we going for eco-rainforest here? Japanese wabi-cha? African Lion Safari? Basically it looks like a Cost Plus threw up in here. There are huge stylized posters of people of ambiguous ethnic origin enjoying the ancient aromatic flavours of Far Coast coffees along the walls—coffees with names like "Belegante" and "Opal Noir". Laurel and I are a little frightened, but I think, hey—there are eight Starbucks within a two block radius of here. So their coffee must at least be serviceable, even if a little scary, right?
No. The coffee is just scary.
And although I don't often say I should go around being more cynical, I should have been in this case. We approached the coffee bar. And we saw these.
This is about when I started to panic
That's right. Proprietary pod-style espresso machines. You know, pushbutton kind. Like at the gas station.
I handed over my coupon and the Coke drone ("Why bother having employees?" said Laurel) pushed a button for "bold" coffee and "cappuccino" style milk and soon had dispensed me a "coffee" in an admittedly very stylish and technologically interesting partially double-walled cup. It was, needless to say, only barely drinkable. Though L. and I both agreed that it was the kind of thing we might be okay with if we were, say, on a plane.
But as we pretended to nurse our scary Coke coffees in the mysterious global village of decor that is Far Coast, our minds began to grow more and more resentful. Other than the obvious abrading qualities of pandering to the ancient/third world by a megalithic colonial corporation, one thing really annoyed us. There was a mancala set on the table behind us. Full of coffee beans.
Where did they even get coffee beans? I mean, you and I both know the stale coffee pods are drop-shipped from Atlanta. What's with all the sacks of decorative beans you aren't using lying around next to the cast iron Japanese teapots you aren't using either? (If they're going to spend all this money on the decor, Laurel and I kept asking—why not actually spend some of it on the beverage product?) Cheeky, Coke. Very cheeky. Just like the huge gestures towards eco-responsibility throughout the store ("Revel in our diversity. Respect the planet we share." is posted over a ginormous recycling bin), everything smacks of pandering. Though their packaging—those double-walled 12% post-consumer-waste cups, not biodegradeable, and topped with handsome teal injection-moulded lids—is at least pretty and interesting, from a packaging engineering standpoint. But I will probably not start drinking coffee based on packaging engineering. (Microfoam rosettas maybe, but I do have a little self-respect.)
The double-walling ends before the last inch of the cup—saving millipennies off the Coca-Cola bottom line!
But overall, I'd still say Far Coast is worth a visit if you are in the area. Because without a doubt, it has an extremely nice bathroom. The only catch here is that the bathrooms are upstairs—but guess what, lazy people? It's your lucky day! Far Coast has an elevator! Not only is the store itself good for a laugh (while it's still in business), you can check out a convenient and clean Yorkville washroom in the middle of your Christmas shopping or spree of arsonizing celebrity restaurant hangouts. And after you sample their plumbing facilities, you'll be ready for a little taste of the future. Take that, ancient worlds!
Gimme! Coffee, Brooklyn, NY
Just to be clear, Oliver is the person who decided it would be funny to get me really really addicted to coffee. I hope he's satisfied. (I guess it's only fair revenge on me for introducing him to the internet.) In any case, although my parents had their hand in it, allowing me to join in on the stuff when I was only a little kid, it's Oliver's fault that I am now in the condition where I just pour out bad stuff, arrange errands around crossing paths with a nice espresso, and have a Flickr page that outs me as somewhat of a weirdo.
Thus it is at his request that I will tell you places you can go and drink coffee if you go to New York City!
Joe—The Art of Coffee
Joe has kind of been my favourite this year over the course of several trips to the city. It has a really stupid name. Possibly it speaks to the more upscale West Village crowd they're catering to, but I'm embarrassed every time I have to try and say that em dash out loud. That said, their cafe on Waverly Place is a splendid little joint: bright and cheery without being quaint, a bustling mix of easy-to-work-at tables (including two coveted window seats) wireless internet streaming in from the neighbours, and supposedly Amy Sedaris makes the cupcakes they serve, though I'm always a little too embarrassed to get them to confirm or deny this. The coffee is consistently great: Barrington Coffee Roasting Company beans at the hand of a pile of friendly baristi who make nice art and aren't a little sassy. Joe is a great place to spend an afternoon, or just grab what you know will be a wonderful coffee when you're near W4 St. or even at their humbler second location off of Union Square. (Apparently they just opened in the Alessi store, too, but the plebian in me wishes they'd open up in Penn Station or something.)
Joe—the Art of Coffee, Waverly Place
Ninth Street Espresso
You want views of willow trees, stupid East Village bootwear, cadres of people that look like they truly need it lining up for really strong espresso? Come here! The coffee is amazing! The only thing about Ninth Street is it's a little far out there—but that's only spoken by my lazy voice. It's totally worth crossing Avenue C for. The atmosphere is more utilitarian than lingery...but you didn't come to linger, right? Also, everyone who works here seems extremely excited about coffee.
Blue Spoon Coffee Company
This place is startlingly cozy for Chambers Street, but makes no pretensions about catering to the business crowd, and as such it's a little more brisk and basic than most of the other places I've been to in the city. If you're looking for good coffee below Canal, this is it for you: skillfully presented Black Cat from Chicago's massive Intelligentsia roastery. But, all hometown loyalty aside, Black Cat has never struck me as truly special—mostly functional. Good, but functional. (Someday when people actually let me become more of a food writer, I'll expand my vocabulary of beverage descriptors to things more illustrative than "it had a functional aroma".) It was totally nice, but the best thing about going to Blue Spoon was accidentally running into my friend Ben on his way to work.
Gimme! Coffee
Gimme! roasts and serves excellent coffee, no two ways about it. The only thing is if you want to have some in New York you have to go to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which is a bummer. It also means the Brooklyn cafe is full of Williamsburg people, and it is also crowded, because though there are supposedly something like 4,889,201 coffee shops in Williamsburg, many of them have figured out that Gimme! is fantastic, and they come and crowd the pleasant booths and sit in the creepy hipster eggshell space chairs. It's okay, though. You can sit facing away from the eggshell space chairs. I've been to Gimme! in Ithaca, too—and the Brooklyn store seems way cleaner! I'm going to risk partisanship and say that if I were in Wililamsburg I'd just keep walking to Greenpoint so I could go to...
Cafe Grumpy
So orange! So cozy! So perfectly lit and kind of awesomely getting everything right. Big wooden corner table to spread your New York Times all over and make chitchat with nice people. Wireless internet. A front room for drinking coffee and getting work done and a back room for looking at artwork and sitting close to your friends on the couch. Exceptionally friendly baristi. Exceptionally good coffee—Counter Culture and Ecco, possibly the Ecco is only at the Manhattan store—and name notwithstanding, a sense of warmth and personality that pervades the whole room. And though the Greenpoint shop (tucked away, just like a neighbourhood place should be, on a mild-mannered corner of Meserole Ave.) is exactly the kind of place I'd make a home away from home, their newest store in Chelsea is exactly the kind of place anyone in Manhattan should be stopping in on as often as they can. It's spare, and new, and when I was there they didn't have enough chairs, and the lighting was flickering, but—you know what they had? The best macchiato I've ever had. And a coffee bar full of baristi from other cafes all excited to come down and check out the newest spot in town, offer encouragement, paw over the two! wildly expensive and fancy single-cup drip coffee Clover machines, and just generally be part of a thriving and inclusive coffee scene the likes of which I hope we someday have in Toronto. While I was in there I overheard the gaggle of coffee people talking about the inter-cafe kickball tournament between Ninth Street, Gimme!, Grumpy, Joe and Park Slope's Gorilla. HOW COOL IS THAT.
Cafe Grumpy Chelsea
Cafe Collage
...and while I was drinking my coffee on the street outside Cafe Grumpy Chelsea (because they didn't have enough seats, and besides it was 63 degrees in November) a friendly Argentinian gentleman leaving the cafe stopped to ask me how I was enjoying my drink. And, like everyone else I'd encountered at the finest NYC cafes, told me to go to every coffee shop I've mentioned in the above list. But he also mentioned a new one that I hadn't heard of yet, Cafe Collage, on Bleecker Street and Macdougal. He told me it was bafflingly spacious, and that they were serving Black Cat, and that it was worth a visit. He was right—and though I kind of didn't even really want coffee that badly when I walked in the door, the sight of a perfect cappuccino being served up to someone else turned me right around. I made small talk with Kyle, who if he didn't seem perfectly content to be working at Cafe Collage I would have picked him up and put him in my pocket and taken him home to Toronto with me, to, oh I dunno, talk about coffee and make snarky comments about silly people with all day long. I had a really really wonderful cappuccino (see, Black Cat? You do have it in you!) while butting into a conversation behind me between another barista and a guy who was all, "Yeah, I played drums on the first Sonic Youth LP...." sitting behind me. (Mostly we discussed the relative merits of Lemony Snicket versus Harry Potter with his daughter, but does it get much more New York than that?) It's a little dark and shiny in here—kind of reminds me of a place I would have done my studying in college—but it's new! It's great! It's friendly and the coffee is good!
Now all the people who live in Williamsburg, people who actually know about coffee and people who have broader descriptive vocabularies than I can all write comments about the broad strokes with which I've painted a coffee community in a city in which I don't even live. But I gotta say: the New York scene is really inspiring, both in terms of entrepreneurialism and taste, and in terms of fostering a sense of locality in a city where often people feel shuffled along like cattle through concrete. That everyone was so mutually supportive and enthusiastic about each others' cafes (and eager to talk to coffee tourist geeks like me) was really fun, and added another dimension to both my enjoyment of my trips to New York and my enjoyment of the drinks themelves.
These NYC and Bklyn shops are doing it just right, full of the breathy excitement of geeky people building a new scene together, without too much of the cynical competitiveness that would make for just another cranky, snobby moment in what could easily be an endless string of them in anyone's day (in any city, really.) Maybe that breathy excitement is just palpatations from all the coffee they're drinking—but if it's making them do things this good—hey! You should order some, too!