After a weekend of eating, consuming caffeinated beverages and walking, walking and more walking, and only exceeded by shopping and a lot of sun on the shoulders, I'm ready to sit down and compose a few blog posts about how wonderful and varied a time can be had in a New York summer weekend spent with an adventurous out-of-town best friend.
But today, about coffee. Blue Bottle Coffee. This is something special, really special and different. The ambiance and the coffee.
We visited their Berry Street location in Williamsburg, all sleek, wood, high ceilings, minimal and bright and airy. It has a different appearance than any coffee bar I've seen in New York. Blue Bottle Coffee is originally a California roaster and maybe that's why the difference.
When I asked for my usual summer order, an iced nonfat latte, I received an effusive recommendation from the barista to take a cold-brewed New Orleans-style iced coffee instead. I was skeptical, but in a place that looks so serious about what's going on in there - roasters roped off to the consuming public taking up over half the warehouse space, test-tube-like glassware doing who-knows-what, I felt I had to take her word for it.
My word for it? Unbelievable. I'll go back to Brooklyn just for that coffee. I found out the deal after I'd finished off my fully recyclable cup-full, sitting on my slightly too-short bar stool at the long wooden communal table. My barista explained that it brews all night long, it's a mixture of many beans (whatever's around, I think she said) and the magic is chicory. Hence, New Orleans-style. To me, it tasted like a chocolate bar had been melted into the coffee. It wasn't too sweet, but it was perfectly rich and chocolate-y. It was an excellent compliment to the tiny taste of adult-fantasy s'more we couldn't resist.
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