The Caffeine Chase

After gallons of lattés, too many little pastries, talking way too fast, and countless sleepless nights, here’s a quick look at our caffeine palaces, large and small. Not everyone is included, because a girl can only drink so much coffee, but for me, it was an adventure as keen as climbing Mt. Everest, swimming the English Channel, or crossing the Sahara Desert.

By Mary Yeung

El Beit
158 Bedford Ave
Mon-Sun 7am-10pm

El Beit probably has the most expensive coffee in town. Well, somebody has to pay for that $11,000 Clover machine. But judging by the long lines that often form here on any given morning, there is apparently a large enough fan base to keep them in business for quite a long time. The latté is really rich with that addictive caramel note. There are the usual baked goods, but they’re known for their breakfast sandwich, soft scrambled eggs seasoned with fried sage with some kind of fancy farm house cheddar cheese on a Sullivan roll. Yum!

Gimme! Coffee
495 Lorimer St
Mon-Sun 7am-8pm

Gimme! Coffee is the place with the most loyal following. It’s not very exciting in the eats department; this place is all about the coffee, the beans, the crèma, and omg! What great crèma! The coffee is rich, complex, but never bitter. Of all the cafés I visited, this one has the most rabid fans, if you even dare to suggest someone else might have better coffee, they will beat you up. It’s like a cult, I guess. So when you’re around Gimme! Coffee fans…ssssh.

Café Grumpy
193 Meserole Ave
Mon-Thurs 7am-7pm; Fri 7am-8pm; Sat 9am-8pm; Sun 9am-7pm

Café Grumpy is the original hipster specialty coffee shop in Greenpoint. They now roast their own beans, they have large spacious unpretentious rooms, and people feel comfortable here. Cafe Grumpy is involved with the community, lending their space for holiday craft fairs and the like since 2005. They serve tasty vegan sandwiches and baked goods. I had an excellent iced latté here this past summer. If you want to buy beans to go, you can pick from their constantly changing menu of roasted beans.

Fabiane’s Cafe & Pastry

142 Bedford Ave

Mon-Sat 7:30am-11pm; Sun 7:30am-10pm

Since 2001, Fabiane’s has been the standard bearer for great pastries in Williamsburg. Three French Culinary Institute trained chefs work here and they whip up beautiful cakes, pies and tarts, and lately, a line of gluten-free goodies that taste as good as the traditional ones. This is a great place to get baked goods for your holiday table, because they look so fab! Their sidewalk café, and a dining area with large windows give you the feeling that you are in the thick of the neighborhood. It is a great place to catch up with old friends, while enjoying a foamy cappuccino.

A-Roma Bakery
475 Grand St
Mon-Fri 7am-9pm; Sat-Sun 8am-8pm

Opened just a year ago, this slightly out of the way café has gained quite a following. The café is small, sits only about 10 people, but it is always packed. People love the food here as well as the coffee. The owner is from Rome, and he is baking up a storm; a salmon quiche, ham and cheese croissants, and my fave, the mushroom onion cheese pizzalette whose crust reminded me of the pizza blanca I get at Sullivan Street Bakery across the river and that’s saying a lot. The pecan tart has so much liquor in it that I almost got drunk! And the latté, using beans roasted in Italy (Esse), is rich and smooth. After 8 P.M. most of the baked goods are 50% off regular price.

Rabbit Hole

352 Bedford Ave
Mon 8am-6pm; Tue-Sun 8am-10pm

The Rabbit Hole, located in southside Williamsburg,  is  very spacious. The high ceiling, moody colored walls and cast iron chandeliers give this place a soulful grandeur. It serves Stumptown coffee, a brand that has cornered a lot of the market in Williamsburg. At Rabbit Hole, you can get a delicious latté and sample their wonderful home baked scones and loafs, I love their apricot and raspberry scones and their apple walnut cakes. They also serve brunch, lunch and dinner. In warm weather, they have one of the nicest backyards around.

Oslo Coffee shops

328 Bedford Ave
133 Roebling St
Mon-Fri 7am-6pm; Sat-Sun 9am-6pm

They have two locations, one near the artists’ building on Roebling St and one on southside Bedford Ave. On any given morning, you will find a vibrant scene of cool looking people hanging about the café. It is a great place to meet people. Not a lot of eats, so it’s all about the coffee, which is super strong. They roast their own beans, so you can take it home and make your own brew.

Phoebe’s Café

323 Graham Ave
Mon-Fri 8am-9pm;
Sat-Sun 9pm-9pm

Good coffee, live music and healthful fare, all add up to happy vegetarians. Here you can chow down on oatmeal, fruit and yogurt and grilled avocado sandwiches, and for the wavering vegan, there is a bagel and lox platter. Kind of reminds me of those old school hippy coffee houses from the 70’s.

Greenpoint Coffee House

195 Franklin St
Mon-Fri 7am-12am
Sat-Sun 8am-12am

This coffee house was there when nothing else was around. It looks old and authentic, and takes you back to the 1940’s, when men wore fedora hats and women wore gloves. Pay a visit for breakfast and coffee just to soak in the nostalgic atmosphere that’s true blue old Brooklyn updated to hipster status.

Brooklyn Standard

188 Nassau Ave
Mon-Sun 7am-11pm

Not a coffee house, more like a deli, it serves one of the best lattés in Greenpoint. Who’s their supplier? Stumptown, of course. Grab a cup, sit on the bench by the door and watch the world go by.

Cho’s Variety

368 Graham Ave
Mon-Sun 7am-8pm

Yet another shop that serves Stumptown coffee, and the regular coffee is brewed in a French Press (so 1980’s); very casual vibe, with funky music. It’s a nice place to work and just hang out. Sit down for two coffees and the barista will throw in the third one for free.

Cookie Road

94 Franklin St
Mon-Sat 9am-8pm;
Sun 10am-8pm

What do you get when two people with Master’s degrees from the Academy of Fine Arts in Poland open a café called Cookie Road on a quiet corner in  Greenpoint? You’re going to get cookies and cakes that look like works of art. Even the breakfast frittata looks like a Monet painting, with delicate strips of purple onions and vibrant specks of bright green and red peppers. Check out the house special, the apple shortbread bar, it’s very flaky and tasty. And the coffee is pretty good too.

La Greca

324 Wythe Ave

Opened this November, La Greca is the newest café on the scene. Run by Carl Chaffee, who owns an upscale furniture store. Thanks to Chaffee’s design sense, the café has a handsome and sleek interior, with bold wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee colors;  bright red tables and midnight black chairs are set against a beautifully patterned blue floor. They serve Cookie Road baked goods (hey, you gotta have good looking food to match the gorgeous decor.)and buy their beans from the Vermont Coffee Company that sells only organic and fair trade coffee. Chaffee says he chose beans grown in the Dominican Republic because it is a country he loves and visits often. His cappuccino is very robust, and he’s open early in the morning for commuters who need a fix before going to the office.

Bakeri

150 Wythe Ave
Tue-Sun 8am-6pm

Bakeri replaces what used to be St. Helen Cafe back in July. It’s tiny but pretty, with a round table that sits two or three, and a communal table that can sit up to seven people. The baked goods are the focus here, along with salads, soup and sandwiches.  Most of the stuff is pretty tasty, but the quality varies from dish to dish. The best include the pillowy donuts and the lavender shortbread. Over all, a very friendly and enthusiastic staff who are not afraid to try new things, like updating chocolate chip cookies with chunks of sea salt or baking a killer bread pudding with a lovely fruit compote. The espresso is flavorful and oh so strong.

Fortunato Brothers

289 Manhattan Ave
Sun-Thu 8am-11pm; Fri-Sat 8am-midnight

When it comes to old world glamour, Fortunato Brothers is hard to beat. They make their own Italian  pastries and serve reasonably priced espresso and cappuccino. Once in  a while, it’s good to take a break from the hipster scene and feast on creamy cannolis, tiramisu, and fresh gelato. Have a little respect and keep your laptop at home, this place is good for meeting a friend or impressing a first date, not for surfing the web. The café has been here for over thirty years; let’s hope the next generation gets to enjoy it too.

Boneshakers

134 Kingsland Ave
Mon-Fri 7am-10pm;
Sat-Sun 9am-10pm

Opening just a year ago, Boneshaker’s Café is a cycling theme café run by cyclists from Trackstar. I don’t own a bike, but I know a good coffee joint when I see one. Boneshakers has  high ceilings, generous sized tables, and the music isn’t too loud. The fare is vegan and vegetarian and good. I like the Molteni; a croissant with melted brie cheese and pears. They get their beans from Gimme! Coffee, and now I will declare the winner of my coffee tasting contest; it is here in the warehouse hinterlands where I enjoyed my best latté. It was smooth, complex, sweet, with a thick crèma and not a hint of bitterness. The same quality I look for in a good man. And yes, it’s ever so slightly better than the one I got at Gimme! Coffee.

Atlas Cafe

116 Havemeyer St
Mon-Sun 7am-10pm

Atlas has been around for a while, it has free wi-fi and that draws a lot of people into the café. You can spend hours here, nobody will make you feel bad. You get to sit in a sunlit room, with floor to ceiling windows and a map of the world on the wall. Get your coffee, latté, or tea while you’re writing your next great American novel; after a chapter or two, get a bagel and cream cheese, and when you finish the third chapter, celebrate with a mutz and tomato panini and a glass of wine. There’s a beatnik vibe about this place; people come, work on their projects and dream that someday they’ll break through to become the next Jonathan Lethem, the next Hungry Girl or the next Milton Glazar. The lattés are three bucks, but dreams are free, all it takes is a little optimism.

Second Stop Café

524 Lorimer St

For many people, Second Stop Café is their home away from home; the word cozy was invented for a place like this — old worn tiled floors, all kinds of collectibles and knickknacks hanging on the walls, vintage signs and posters are everywhere. The display cases are made of wood and look like they’re from the thirties and forties. They’re filled with home baked vegan and vegetarian baked goods, like a spiced fig bread. In season, the figs come from nearby backyards. Talk about eating local! The place may look old fashioned, but there is a very expensive Clover machine at the counter, and Second Stop Café serves Stumptown coffee, giving nearby Gimme! major competition.

Lucky Shot

145 Driggs Ave

Opened by the owner of Variety Coffee, Lucky Shot has brought Stumptown coffee to Driggs Ave. It’s a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of space, but it’s clean and modern, and I like the fact that it displays original art work by local artists. I wish more coffee houses would do the same. There are so many artists in Williamsburg and Greenpoint that need wall space.

Porto Rico Importing Co.

636 Grand Street
(718) 782-1200

Porto Rico Importing is a family affair, run by the Longo family for three generations. The beans are roasted in southside Williamsburg. In the old days, you used to have to buy their beans in Manhattan, but today, you can get them right here, on Graham Ave. There are bags and bags of fresh roasted beans to choose from, and their mini cafe serves up coffee and lattés made from the beans of the week. Every week they have a sale on one or another of their gourmet organic beans, and their prices are very fair, ranging from $6 to $11 dollars a pound. It’s a good place to visit if you love mixing beans to create your own perfect blend.