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).

Perk and Poltergeists

Happy pagan-derived fall solstice holiday that's been so stripped of meaning by the marketing machine its original meaning is today even more watered down than diner decaf.  Thank the jolly Irish and their consuming copious quantities of distilled barley spirits for giving us Samhain (sow-win; Gaelic for "summer's end"), a time when they believed the dead would walk among us and guttersnipes would go door to door soliciting food, offering prayers for the dead in return—"souling," as it was called.  Somehow, masquerades got into this mix, and the reciprocity went wayside in favor of filling the plastic pumpkin with Reeses and running off on a sugar high.  Selfish darn kids.

But I digress.  Being a java junkie who digs ghost stories, the thought of a haunted coffee house seemed about as good as it gets, and wouldn't you know it, I found just that.  Despite the spooktastic strobe-lighted walk through it sets up in a storage closet, Bank Square Coffee House in Beacon, NY (about an hour north of Manhattan, and which I affectionately call Williamsburg North), doesn't need to do anything special to get in the spirit of the season: the place is apparently crawling with living impaired personalities.  Even having been to Beacon and the cafe (formerly the Muddy Cup) numerous times, I had no idea about any of it until stumbling upon this video—though the historical factoid bomb drop helps the place's unusual floor plan and ramp towards the back room, make so much more sense.  That, coupled with beans bought locally at Coffee Labs Roasters a dozen miles downriver in Sleepy Hollow country, makes a trip to Bank Square a Halloween season must.

The Perfect Pourover

Blue Bottle's James Freeman demonstrates at their Brooklyn roastcafé.  The San Francisco stalwart, which conquered the Williamsburg caffeine scene last year and placed pop-up perk points at Rockaway Beach, the New Amsterdam Market, Milk Studios and Highline Park, will open its latest location at Rockefeller Center this November.

(You know the man is an artist when he's being translated halfway around the world—though in all fairness, Blue Bottle does import probably more Japanese java junkie paraphernalia than anyone else in the biz).

Tea for Me

The tasting room at Harney & Sons

I consider tea coffee's commonlaw spouse, consummated by menu marriage anywhere warm beverages and pastries are served.  Markedly different, yet bonded by a common set of values: they're both best warm and pair equally well with Pepperidge Farm products or streusel muffins.

In coincidental homage to today's Tea Party debate, I seized this sunny 75-degree day to trek my northern escape route to tranquility for a day jaunt to Millerton, New York, home to Harney & Sons Tea Company.  For those unfamiliar, the work of master tea blender Michael Harney is served in some of the world's finest dining and hospitality venues, and is the exclusive tea offering by both Four Seasons Hotels and all Barnes & Noble in-store cafes.

Millerton, a town of roughly 1,000 residents (on a weekend) two hours north of Manhattan, blends bohemian bliss, rural ruggedness and big city chic—something a Bay Area boy can appreciate anyday, but hardly the place you'd expect to find the headquarters of possibly the world's most prominent tea blenders.  But the factory and tasting room are here, as is the company store and small sit-down café with table service overlooking the busy bike trail built on the old New York & Harlem Railroad. The entire operation is as unassuming and understately elegant as the town of two blocks itself.  While the factory, located along Route 22 on the outskirts of town, isn't open to the public, the latter three facilities are conjoined in the heart of the village.

My personal cup of tea (come on, you saw that one coming) is the tasting room, a veritable cornucopia of loose leaf blends from floor to ceiling where friendly staffers steep free samplings to assist in almost always challenging selections.  Each sachet is a flavorgasm to give your tea tongue pleasures it has never known.  Today, I scored some of my usual favorite, Tropical Green (a pineapple-infused take on the traditional Asian base), and season appropriately, African Autumn (a cranberry-orange rooibos blend).  And for my friends and relatives in the kosher nostra, you won't have to give either up for passover either.

Despite their impressive presence in Millerton, the company officially calls neighboring Salisbury, Connecticut home and recently opened its flagship store in SoHo.

Millerton is also home to Irving Farm Coffee Company, the regionally revered farm-based roasting outfit spawned from 71 Irving Place in Manhattan.  That's it's own entry for another day, but after all this talk about teas, I'll tease you with this food porn of the espresso chocolate chip crumb cake I scored this same day.  Om nom nom.

Essential knowledge at Oblong Books

This postage stamp-sized village, ranked among the 10 Coolest Small Towns in America by Frommer's Budget Travel, has other draws too.  My inner bookworm has always been down with Oblong Books & Music, a bi-locational bastion of the classic neighborhood bookseller (the other being in Rhinebeck) many hope the demise of Borders will bring back.  Aside from the awesome selection of local and special interest titles, the coolest part is the shape of the store itself: not its namesake one, but an irregular two-story "L" snaking two blocks.  The whole town is also close enough to hock a loogie into Connecticut—and you drive a few more miles north to the Massachusetts border and strike a Twister-esque pose, you can be in all three states simultaneously.  Cool beans.

There's also the Oakhurst Diner, a postcard perfect 1930s greasy spoon recently rebirthed with a farm-to-table twist (and known to be frequented by Law & Order's Chris Noth).  Far from the dingy dinette it used to be, the new menu balances classic fare with organic options and emphasizes its almost entirely locally-sourced ingredients.  And would you believe it: the new ownership, which oversaw the transformation, includes a Harney.

Food for thought: coffee beans only grow south of the equator, yet tea is most closely associated with the jolly old island nation with the fewest sunny days and palest people on the planet. (I can say that remorselessly, because I'm one of them).  Cheerio!