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Best of New York Food 2004

Coffee Buzz

We asked our house foodies to give us the lowdown on a few of their favorite things.

  • Old-School: A Café Sabarsky  creation. (Photo by Carina Salvi)
  • Best Espresso

    Gorilla Coffee

    97 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, 718-230-3244

    It’s as hard to find a consistently great espresso in New York as it is to find a root-beer float in Rome. Deftly pulled and properly short, rich, dense, and not too bitter, and with a decent crema, Gorilla’s comes closest.

  • Best Macchiato

    Cipriani La Specialità

    110 East 42nd Street, 212-557-5088

    The perfect expression of steamed milk and espresso, marked with a fine tuft of froth, served in elegant china cups, and sipped standing up by Italian expats in $4,500 shoes.

  • Best Latte

    St. Helen Cafe

    150 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 718-302-1197

    Smooth and well balanced, it’s made with a lush, syrupy espresso, and the owners, a pair of clothing designers and rabid coffee connoisseurs, execute the signature latte leaf to Pacific Northwest perfection.

  • Best Coffee Bar

    Joe

    141 Waverly Place, 212-924-6750

    Good coffee, latte, and Amy Sedaris’s cupcakes, plus disheveled, groggy-eyed celebrities. Is that Philip Seymour Hoffman over there in the Adidas flip-flops?

  • Best Old-World Kaffeehaus

    Café Sabarsky

    1048 Fifth Avenue, 212-288-0665

    Rattan newspaper holders (filled with indecipherable Austrian newspapers), plenty of delicious Viennese pastries, and coffee served the old-fashioned way, on a silver tray with a cup of water on the side.

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine