Swallow Cafe
49 Bogart Street
(near Moore Street)
There’s good technique behind the bar, and the dark Italian-style beans give the cappuccinos a nostalgic ring. Get a shot at the counter or nurse your coffee on the couch, then graduate to a michelada at Roberta’s around the corner. There’s no reason to leave Bushwick. — Oliver Strand
Stumptown Coffee Roasters
18 West 29th Street
(between Broadway and Fifth Avenue)
Travertine floors, walnut bar, natty staff: When Stumptown Coffee Roasters opened in the Ace Hotel in 2009, it was one of New York’s most elegant coffee bars. Now it’s one of the busiest, and for a good reason. The cappuccinos and mochas (made with Mast Brothers Chocolate) are worth the wait. Coffee geeks and the coffee-curious should trek out to a second coffee bar that opened in the warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where the beans are roasted. There’s no espresso, just coffee brewed by the cup, with a mind-spinning selection of up to 35 kinds of beans. The Red Hook location is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday only. One of the City’s Best. — Oliver Strand
Port’s Coffee and Tea
251 West 23rd Street
(between Seventh and Eighth Avenues)
A small, solid coffee bar across the street from the Chelsea Hotel. Halfhearted nautical theme, Stumptown done well. — Oliver Strand
Peels
325 Bowery
All the neighborhood’s coltish young things are drawn to the second restaurant from the duo behind Freemans. Mornings are a delight: claim a stool and order a cappuccino and a buckwheat muffin with lemon and rosemary. Nights are a different scene. — Oliver Strand
Ost Café
441 East 12th Street
(at Avenue A)
Excellent coffee, including a fine cappuccino. Most people here seem to nurse their drinks, a tacit rent for the comfy chairs and WiFi. — Oliver Strand
Nolita Mart & Espresso Bar
156 Mott Street
(near Broome Street)
A coffee bar in front of a convenience store that, despite the name, is decidedly in Chinatown. The espresso is Stumptown’s Hair Bender, the pour over bar is outfitted with Beehouse drippers. Stand and sip at counters made with reclaimed wood. — Oliver Strand
Ninth Street Espresso (Tompkins Square Park)
341 East 10th Street
(near Avenue B)
A white shoebox-shaped storefront across the street from Tompkins Square Park that serves some of the best espressos and cappuccinos in New York. It’s a pleasant spot, a part of the fabric of the neighborhood, with narrow counters inside for quick drinking and a bench outside for sitting with your dog. One of the City’s Best. — Oliver Strand
Little Skips
941 Willoughby Avenue
(at Myrtle Avenue)
A funky Bushwick coffee spot that serves its neighborhood well: tattered chairs, overstuffed couches, a sideways view of elevated train tracks through the plate-glass windows. The coffee is serious, even if the baristas stray a little with the tasty Bushwick Egg Cream, a traditional egg cream with a shot of espresso from Counter Culture Coffee. — Oliver Strand
La Colombe Torrefaction (SoHo)
270 Lafayette Street
(near Prince Street)
Small, sleek, busy. Coffee is a crapshoot. Sometimes it measures up to the reputation the roaster earned in Philadelphia; sometimes the baristas couldn’t care less. — Oliver Strand
Blue Bottle Coffee (Rockaway Beach)
106-01 Shore Front Parkway
A summer fling: a fully equipped coffee bar (espresso, pour over, New Orleans-style iced coffee) shares a stand on the boardwalk with Caracas Arepa Bar. It’s a part of the Rockaway Beach Club, Rockaway Taco’s plan to turn New York’s best surf spot into a food scene. (Through September.) — Oliver Strand
Joe (Grand Central Terminal location)
In Grand Central Terminal, 89 East 42nd Street
(at Park Avenue)
Small, crowded, always busy. Really just a coffee counter, but despite the cramped conditions it meets Joe’s high standards: beans from Ecco Caffé, highly trained baristas turning out some of the city’s best coffee. — Oliver Strand
Think Coffee
248 Mercer Street
(between West Third and Fourth Streets)
The baristas at Think Coffee make expert cappuccinos with a custom Italian-style dark blend from Porto Rico Importing. More interesting are the brewed-to-order coffees made with beans from different artisanal roasters. Think Coffee’s three roomy cafes (ample seating, tables big enough for laptops) were joined this summer by a smaller coffee bar in the N.Y.U. Bookstore on Broadway. — Oliver Strand
Third Rail Coffee
240 Sullivan Street
Third Rail Coffee punches above its weight: It’s one of the best – and smallest – coffee bars in the city. And it’s one of the few to pull two kinds of espresso, Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea’s Black Cat and Stumptown Coffee Roaster’s Hair Bender. Order a cortado, squeeze behind a table the size of an LP, and taste just how much New York coffee has changed for the better. — Oliver Strand
Vandaag
103 Second Avenue
(at East Sixth Street)
A tastefully spare restaurant with raw concrete floors, Eames chairs and an old La Marzocco Linea behind the bar. Sit at a leather banquette, order a shot of Plowshares espresso, a still-warm stroopwafel (sticky, delicate, civilized). — Oliver Strand
Venticinque Coffee
162 Fifth Avenue
(near Degraw Street)
Sleek by the standards of Park Slope, take your macchiato to the counter in front, watch the latest in baby gear parade by. — Oliver Strand
Tacombi @ Fonda Nolita
267 Elizabeth Street
(between Prince and East Houston Streets)
A taqueria in a NoLIta warehouse that brews coffee to order in a Chemex. Order a Veracruz-style café con leche made with Plowshares coffee and a breakfast taco with egg, chorizo and guajillo chili. Simple pleasures in a stylish setting. — Oliver Strand
Sweetleaf
10-93 Jackson Avenue
(between 48th and 48th Avenues)
Sweetleaf recently climbed a few rungs: now a pour-over bar and single-origin espresso program round out a coffee menu anchored by Stumptown’s Hair Bender. There are fresh pastries and a good selection of whole beans, a laptop lounge (WiFi, tables) and a vinyl room (LP’s, a turntable). One of the most civilized things about Long Island City. — Oliver Strand
Southside Coffee
652 Sixth Avenue
(at 19th Street)
This friendly, bare-bones coffee bar opened in 2009 and is already a neighborhood fixture. The chairs out front fill up when the weather is nice. — Oliver Strand
The Smile
26 Bond Street
(between Lafayette Street and the Bowery)
This stylish, dimly lighted basement restaurant has a vintage Faema from 1963 (not the reissue), regarded as the first modern espresso machine. But even if you don’t care about the mechanics you can appreciate the aesthetics — the dials look like they’re from a Fiat Spider. And everybody can appreciate the plummy espressos. — Oliver Strand
Sit & Wonder
688 Washington Avenue
(at St. Marks Avenue)
A large and dimly lighted room that feels a little like a bar, the kind where you get beer. It’s serious about coffee, with a rotating selection of serious origin espressos. — Oliver Strand
Moomah Café
161 Hudson Street
(between Laight and Hubert Streets)
A arts and crafts center for stylish TriBeCa children where the coffee is as good as any of the edgy spots in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Stroller parking out front. — Oliver Strand
Saturdays Surf
31 Crosby Street
(between Broome and Grand Streets)
A surf shop tucked away on one of the last quiet streets in SoHo. Inside are lacquered surfboards, cult sneakers and a boxy La Marzocco staffed by baristas who know what they’re doing. Take your macchiato to the deck in back, browse the weekend bags on the way. So pleasant you won’t mind the paper cups. — Oliver Strand
The National
8 Rivington Street
(bewteen Chrystie Street and the Bowery)
At night, it is an intimate restaurant; by day, it’s a coffee bar with good cappuccinos and a small selection of pastries baked in house. — Oliver Strand
Milk Bar
620 Vanderbilt Avenue
(at Prospect Place)
Cheerful and family friendly, with a full cafe menu. One of the owners is Australian, which means there’s a flat white on the menu and cocoa powder on the cappuccino. — Oliver Strand
Marlow & Sons
81 Broadway
(at Berry Street)
Known for oysters and wine, Marlow & Sons also has a serious coffee bar in the sunny shop in front. The house espresso is Stumptown’s Hair Bender, and a single origin espresso is usually available. (The shop also has a curated selection of whole beans for sale: Sightglass, Stumptown, Terroir.) Weekdays, take your coffee to a table outside. Weekends, expect a crush. — Oliver Strand
Maialino
Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue
(between East 21st and 22nd Streets)
This Roman-style restaurant turns coffee into a ritual: during the morning, a pour-over drip bar is set up in a sunny area up front. — Oliver Strand
Lucid Café
311 Lexington Avenue
(at East 38th Street)
A Murray Hill storefront with two tables, a handful of chairs, Counter Culture Coffee, espresso drinks and a Japanese slow dripper. Friendly and unassuming, a neighborhood spot that does all the little things right. — Oliver Strand
Gimme! Coffee
228 Mott Street
(between Prince and Spring Streets)
The two New York outposts of Ithaca’s Gimme! Coffee serve some of the city’s best coffee. The Leftist Espresso Blend can be sharp on its own, but it balances the milk in the cappuccino, which is so lush and creamy it’s almost a dessert. The Williamsburg shop is laid back, and has tables; the narrow NoLIta location is buzzy, with room for maybe three people at the zinc bar. — Oliver Strand
General Greene
229 DeKalb Avenue
(at Clermont Avenue)
A neighborhood restaurant that does coffee well. When all the seats and stools are taken, walk your cappuccino to the curb (which is more pleasant than the benches by the kitchen’s flight path). Whole beans from Counter Culture Coffee are for sale in the tiny shop in back. — Oliver Strand
Fort Defiance
365 Van Brunt Street
(at Dikeman Street)
In a part of Red Hook that feels like a sleepy Maine port, Fort Defiance is part bar, part restaurant and part serious coffee joint with trained baristas. In the morning there’s pour-over coffee made with single-origin beans. — Oliver Strand
Five Leaves
18 Bedford Avenue
(at Lorimer Street)
The baristas at this restaurant can hold their own with the city’s leading coffee bars. The affogato is transcendent: two shots of espresso served with vanilla ice cream from the General Greene, it is the best in the city. — Oliver Strand
Everyman Espresso
136 East 13th Street
(between Third and Fourth Avenues)
The little coffee bar that could. Tucked in a corner of the lobby of the Classic Stage Company, Everyman deserves its citywide following for espresso: Counter Culture beans, Synesso machine, good technique. Recently, Everyman brought up its brewing. Now there are also single-origin coffees on the AeroPress or Bonmac. So much going on in such a small space. — Oliver Strand
Espresso 77
35-57 77th Street
(between 35th and 37th Avenues)
Child-friendly, small, and crowded, Espresso 77 is on a side street in a busy part of Jackson Heights. There’s beer, wine and Gimme! Coffee. — Oliver Strand
Eleven Madison Park
11 Madison Avenue
(at East 24th Street)
Serious coffee meets fine dining: the tableside siphon or Chemex at Eleven Madison Park, one of only seven restaurants awarded four stars by The New York Times, is part ceremony, part spectacle. There’s the service (relaxed, elegant), the setting (one of the city’s great rooms) and the coffee (Intelligentsia and Ecco). A meal isn’t required, though deep pockets help: the siphon, which serves three, costs around $25. Just ask for a seat in the bar area. — Oliver Strand
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