Bottled Up

Every so often, this Bay Area baby needs his Bottle.

I speak, of course, of Blue Bottle Coffee Company, the apotheosized Mission District java mecca—and subject of a September 2011 Fortune feature—that, much to my delight, recently reached the Right Coast.  A cleverly re-purposed Berry St. industrial space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has become their base of East Coast operations, housing a full-fledged roastery, baking facilities and a coffee bar earning instant respect from resident neighborhood hipsters (and they're a very discriminating crowd).  Word on the street has founder James Freeman frequenting the site on a bi-monthly if not more basis, ensuring the same San Francisco treat caffeine connoisseurs have come to expect from the Blue Bottle brand.

Even in a town so stubbornly stuck on its Starbucks, Blue Bottle's refreshingly unconventional dogma has earned it a fast following in Gotham, spreading by word of mouth and slipping into conversations lubricated by lead-ins like, "There's a place in Brooklyn with s'mores made from moonshine-laced marshmallows," or "Have you heard of the place with these crazy $20-grand Japanese coffee brewers?"  The company recently dropped pop-up perk points at such trafficked sites as High Line Park and Milk Studios, and will debut its second brick-and-mortar bar at Rockefeller Center this November. Not bad for a company humbly launched in 1999 as a bean counter in a Hayes Valley garage, and has barely been here a year and a half (the Berry Street roastcafé only opened in Spring 2010).

The entire roastery operation in Williamsburg, though partitioned,
is plainly visible to perking patrons in the building's cafe section,
offering an insider's look at what it takes to keep Blue Bottle brewing.

 My waits between fixes here are far too long—some more than others, but every one worth it. To get there takes being sardined onto any Bedford Ave.-bound cattle car L train, where fresh air is a premium, space is a luxury and comfort zones are too often nonexistent.  This was all too exacerbated during my first visit, when full service on the line was temporarily discontinued and Bedford became the transfer between two Manhattan and Canarsie-bound shuttle trains, creating a nightmarish scenario for anyone first boarding there on account of having to constantly compete with connecting passengers to plunge through the closing doors (which, despite pleas from increasingly irate MTA employees, few who missed three trains already seemed patient to stand clear of).  Subsequent trips have thankfully been more bearable.  Plus, even the slowest hop skip into the BK beats six hours in an airborne aluminum can back for a fix where Tony Bennett left his heart.

Lost in Nom: Blue Bottle's signature Stout
Coffee Cake w/Caraway Streusel

Today's trip involved finally trying Blue Bottle's much mentioned stout coffee cake, which after attending the Village Voice Brooklyn Pour the previous two weekends ago put the idea fresh in mind.  While the original secret to the revered recipe, developed by pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman (the founding Freeman's wife), was said to be Stout of Circumstance from Haight-Ashbury's Magnolia Gastropub, the Eastern equivalent substitutes Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout—true to their mantra of sourcing only local and sustainable ingredients.  Whatever the case, the resulting crisp but doughy delectable is, at least as far as I'm concerned, the chef-d'oeuvre of perk-paired pastries.  The caraway streusel crumble, grazing the pleasant of rolled oats and currant nuances,  complements the pecan flavors of moister inner contents that, with a swig of your latte, seems so sinful it should be banned in six southern states.

From its avant-garde business model to delivery of a consistently perfect product, Blue Bottle has proven itself the fresh, exciting force of positive energy in the coffee industry New York, New York needed.  To evoke some Sinatra, you've made it here—you'll make it anywhere.

Fact: You won't find a Kyoto brewer more stoke anywhere else in the five boroughs.
(Or in Connecticut, Long Island, Rhode Island, and definitely not...New Jersey).