all good things start at blue bottle coffee

Almost every morning in New York City Zane and I went to Blue Bottle Coffee. Zane read about Blue Bottle Coffee in Todd Selby's new book 'Edible Selby' and just like Selby understands good aesthetics he understands good food and coffee. Blue Bottle Coffee began in San Fran but it is now sprinkled throughout the U.S. with several coffee bars in NYC. Zane and I secretly hope that this craft coffee culture will eventually overturn Starbucks, making for a Quality victory in America (luckily for us New Zealand is already a world leader in coffee).

Zane and I jumped all over the coffee menu with our orders - from filter/drip to espresso to a delectable 70% cocoa coffee (a mocha may not be a real coffee but even my espresso shot drinking BF said it was incredible). Blue Bottle also sells the best homemade granola (which comes in keepable glass jars) and a whole array of coffee related merchandise.

Also, If you love coffee and hate mass exploiters of everything a.k.a. Nespresso (why George Clooney, WHY), I would thoroughly recommend purchasing the coffee book 'The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee Growing, Roasting, and Drinking, with Recipes' by James Freeman, Caitlin Freeman and Tara Duggan. Click for Blue Bottle Coffee's website.

 
 
On our Chelsea day Zane and I ended up returning to Blue Bottle Coffee to check out their very special siphon coffee bar. Their siphon bar is the first in New York City and involves a Japanese method of coffee making which uses heat, pressure and temperature gauges. It's expensive but totally worth the experience. Well...actually Zane and I didn't ended up paying for our coffee because the barista, Mac, shouted us as a welcome to NYC present. We actually spent over an hour at the siphon bar chatting to Mac who's from the West Coast. I told the lovely Rockefeller Blue Bottle Coffee staff about Mac and we all agreed that people like him make travelling brilliant. Wherever you are in the world thanks man!

All Good Things is in TriBeCa and its name sums it up completely. All I'll say is that at this place you can get craft beer, meat, cheese, chocolate (including Mast Brothers), Blue Bottle Coffee and plants. I was sad when they didn't let me set up my house underneath one of the stalls. Why leave a place where everyThing inside is All Good?

 

P.S. Check out my first feature for Critic Magazine here

 

xx

Lou