http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/dining/where-to-find-serious-coffee-in-new-york-everywhere.html 2014-12-04 07:29:36 Where to Find Serious Coffee in New York? Everywhere Painstakingly prepared coffees, made to order, are moving into neighborhoods not known for patience. === If you want to see just how much has changed in New York’s coffee scene in the last few years, stop by The company, which has eight locations in Manhattan and three more on the way, has the familiar feel of a chain store: cheerful cashiers, enormous lattes, flavored syrups. But look carefully and you’ll also see a short menu of exceptional coffees from cult roasters, prepared to order on an AeroPress, a syringe-like brewer that produces coffee with unusual clarity. Until recently, this was the kind of coffee and equipment you saw only at the hard-core coffee shops, the ones that felt like underground clubs: judgmental staff, coded language, obscure locations. Now you can find a drink like this meticulously prepared by friendly baristas in branded polo shirts. You can also find it nearly anywhere, at prices comparable to the drinks at the bigger coffee chains. According to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the city had 1,830 coffee shops as of March, adding 130 shops in the previous 12 months; the majority were single locations or part of a smaller chain. On average, one coffee shop opened in New York every three days. It’s not just that the coffee scene is growing; it’s also growing up. In the years since New York first emerged as a serious coffee town, the zealotry behind the counter has softened, while the quality of what’s in the cup has improved. The nerdy shops are busier than ever — the ones that favor lighter roasts (which have more nuanced flavors), exclusively carry beans from the most recent harvest (which are fresher, and therefore taste better), and save their best coffees for the brew bar (where each cup is brewed individually with the focus of a monk raking a rock garden). That the audience has grown is in no small part because of the changing geography of good coffee. Even former coffee deserts like Midtown and the financial district are flush with new shops. “For a long time, our most sophisticated drinkers were at our downtown shops,” said Jonathan Rubinstein, who founded the coffee company It seems that real estate in those areas would be prohibitively expensive for serious coffee bars, the kind that offer brewed-to-order coffees and expertly pulled espressos — labor-intensive, low-margin businesses. In Midtown, a 420-square-foot retail space with no seating, essentially a to-go window, may cost more than $12,000 monthly in rent, and a 900-square-foot shop may run $30,000 a month. Nor would those neighborhoods necessarily appeal to owners. “I was not looking at Midtown at all,” said Ken Nye, the founder of But by offering favorable lease terms and facilitating construction, developers have had success luring coffee bars into office buildings and hotels. The real estate developer Jamestown approached Traditionally, the batch brewer — the large coffee urn you would see in an office break room or at a church social — provides the muscle for a shop: It’s easy to dispense a drip coffee to go. But at shops like During the lunch rush, when a mostly corporate crowd floods the tiny room, the staff at Little Collins will turn out as many as 120 coffees in two hours. “The challenge is to get coffee out really quickly,” Mr. Unglik said. “People around here don’t like to wait for anything.” The growth is not confined to Midtown or the financial district. A number of small but influential roasters that made their names elsewhere are planting flags in New York. One of the most impressive facilities to open this past year was not a shop. The room may feel like an upscale jeans store, but it functions like a demonstration kitchen at a culinary institute. “It’s a space that the coffee community never had before,” said Jesse Kahn, the coordinator of the training center. “Making coffee requires the same focus and attention to detail you give to anything that’s comestible. It needs to be made with care and attention to be any good.” Serious coffee drinkers know that the question of who is roasting the coffee is as important as where the beans are from, and the New York scene is maturing in that respect, too. Many of the more celebrated local shops, including But New York also has its share of shops that select and stock notable roasters from across the country and all over the world. Joe Pro Shop, a cramped coffee bar geared toward professionals, is the most exuberant of the city’s multiroaster shops, as they are known, offering a selection of coffees that change every week. Recently, there were 18 in stock, including beans from revered roasters like the Barn in Berlin, George Howell Coffee of Acton, Mass., and Heart Coffee in Portland, Ore. These are the coffees that coffee geeks like. You could go to the Joe Pro Shop every week for a year to pick up one bag of coffee for yourself and one for a friend, and never buy the same beans twice. A current of excitement surged through the city’s scene when Box Kite That expertise, and the willingness of customers to try unusual or even challenging coffees, is what powers this evolving and expanding scene. Over the next few months, there will be a crop of new shops, including a Interactive Map: