The Empire Coffee Building: Your Guide to New York's Coffee Scene

It's a Caffeine State of Mind

Boasting a mean roast and a vast number of independent artisanal coffee stores, New Yorkers are spoilt for choice when it comes to topping-up their caffeine fix. So, with that in mind, we eschewed the main streets and the shining Starbucks signs (because of course we would) and headed out in search of good coffee. Here we go, below is our top 5 coffee shops in New York City.

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Reunion's qualities go beyond its coffee

Homecoming: 107 Franklin St, Brooklyn

Part flower shop, part coffeehouse, Homecoming is a unique spot in Williamsburg to get your coffee fix. Despite its minimal seating (just a couple of seats at the front and an outside area for when the sun is shining), Homecoming’s tasty coffee and quirky vibe makes it a great spot to take a quick break from your meandering of the artsy Williamsburg streets.

                TRY: Taking the setting in mind, it’s no surprise that the flowery flavour extends to the menu, with the chai latte and hibiscus doughnut topping our list of recommendations!

Coffee with a side of flowers

Greecologies: 379 Broome Street, New York

Located just across Brooklyn Bridge in the Italian area of town, Greecologies is a coffee-stop with a difference in that it specialises in on-site made yogurt. Using a combination of traditional and modern techniques, Greecologies is able to combine a modern interior design with good coffee and a unique snack to coax yourself through your day (if the comfy seats and wifi doesn’t distract you first)!

                TRY: Their modern-made yogurt with banana slices, cocoa nips, sesame seeds and honey is to die for.

Greecologies' yogurt is worth a visit on its own

Reunion: 544 Union Avenue, Brooklyn

Also in Williamsburg, Reunion is a caffeine pit-stop that may just convince you to stay for a meal. With a fantastic aesthetic, Reunion’s menu takes inspiration from the owners’ Israeli-roots to offer an interesting selection of food to go along with your coffee. With its friendly staff and cosy atmosphere, a quick visit may well be enough to turn this Union Avenue staple into a regular trip!

                TRY: For the caffeine-needy, their chai latte is fantastic but if you have some free time, you can’t go wrong with their falafel starter!

Reunion, the perfect combo of food and caffeine

Brooklyn Roasting Company: 25 Jay Street, Brooklyn

They may be all over the place (well, in a few different locations across the city at least), but their home will always be Jay Street. Roasting a selection of small-batch beans from acros the world, Brooklyn Roasting Company’s fairtrade and organic coffee is brewed on site within view of their grinding machines. With a stable wifi connection as well as a good selection of pastries, a juice-bar and a book store on-site (not to mention the exposed-brick interior), this is a coffee shop you could easily spend all day in working on whatever you need done and not even notice the hours roll by! Need to stretch your legs? With the water-front park just across the street, this is the ideal space to park-up all day.

                TRY: Have a sweet-tooth? Their maple shay surely won’t disappoint.

That vintage aesthetic had us purring!

Absolute Coffee: 327 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn

Staying in Brooklyn, Absolute Coffee is a neighborhood favorite. Easily reached on the A and C metro line, this cute coffee stop may soon become a regular journey. Brewing a wide range of unique roasts, Absolute is perfect for people looking for a good coffee to see them through their morning tasks. For the more adventurous visitor, the store also carries maps of Brooklyn’s different districts, outlining the city’s independent stores, restaurants, and services, making this a fantastic starting point for an exploration-filled day!

                TRY: Take a look-see at what they’re brewing that day and consider a filter coffee to get you on your way.

Absolute-ly ready for an adventure!

Why an Airbnb may be the way forward on your next trip

 Searching for accommodation for your next holiday?

So you’ve booked your flights, next step? Accommodation. Targeting a combination of tourists and business-travelers, hotels are undoubtedly the easiest and most luxurious way to travel, but personally, unless a resort holiday is what you want, we would book an Airbnb over a hotel 90% of the time. Yes, there is a little more research that needs to go into booking an Airbnb over a hotel (pictures, location, reviews of the property as well as reviews of the host themselves) but, staying in one can be so much more rewarding than staying in a conventional hotel and, for around the same price as a hostel, should definitely be strongly considered whatever your budget. 

Here’s why…

Location:

The general consensus is that hotels are dominant in ‘tourist’ areas, but what if you don’t want to be surrounded by tourist amenities? With a wealth of options that span the entirety of the city (spots in Mexico City range from city-centre flats to out of town villas), Airbnb properties ensure that you are never too far from anything you want to see. The fact that these are houses owned by locals also means that you have a higher likelihood of finding a bed on your more remote travels, something never more clearly seen than in the Scottish Highlands where a brief look in the area surrounding Smoo Cave shows a solitary SYHA hostel that seems to be fully booked from now until eternity or several close Airbnb options.

Think this dog fancies a game of fetch?

Price:

Now of course there are going to be luxury apartments on Airbnb in every city that are comparable to the prices of hotels, but in general it is fairly clear that prices on Airbnb are much more reasonable than their hotel counterparts. Take Edinburgh for example. A single night in the ‘cheap’ Ibis hotel in the city centre ranges between £65 to £130 for a room while an Airbnb would set you back £70 for an entire flat, fitting 4 guests. Add to that the convenience of having full access to amenities (a host in Memphis provided unlimited ice-tea in the fridge among other things) and a kitchen and the choice becomes obvious! Not only is this great as it saves you some pennies in your pocket, but it also frees up a lot more cash for you to spend throughout your holiday on the things that actually matter, the experiences!

 

Where better to relax under the stars than this High Desert House in California?

Expertise:

So this one will change depending on if you’re renting out an entire flat or just a room, but the expertise of your host cannot be ignored, after all they’re locals in the place your visiting! While all hotels will have a concierge service/ office staff there to assist you with your questions, you’ll rarely find them recommending anything different to the guides designed for tourists. Your Airbnb host? They’re experts in where the locals go. Best coffee shop to relax in? They’ve been there. Non-tourist bars? They drink there. A bipartisan opinion on an attraction? They’re your best bet. It is often when you go off the beaten path that you discover the heart and soul of the city and who best to show you the way than someone who is an active part of the local culture.

Dairsie Castle is where you go to live out your Game of Thrones fantasies?

Uniqueness:

Don’t get me wrong, there are some beautiful hotels around the world, but unless you are showing me the Hilton in Hawaii (it has penguins in the foyer, it wins in everything), they all kind of look and feel the same: glass structures with floor upon floor of corridor, each housing countless near-identical rooms, there’s just no character to them. That is where Airbnb steps in. Aye, many may be standard apartments but look beyond those and you’ll find yourself with the opportunity of staying inside a campsite in the desert, a cave-dwelling used in Pirates of the Caribbean, a dog-shaped house and even a Scottish castle… How many people can say that they’ve slept in a medieval castle?! 

This house is literally all you ever wanted as a kid...

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Lost is Fun

- Wander Lost -

What can I say? I'm a person who loses things: from USB sticks to house keys, headphone cables to Oyster Cards (for all of you Londoners out there, you're not the only ones) and travel itineraries. Yet, unlike the other items on the list, I’ve always found that the lack of a concrete plan leads to a much more thrilling adventure, to the point that I now make a conscious plan to not micro-manage my trips.

We’ve all been there, your bags are packed (mentally at least), you’ve yelp’d all of the foodie attractions, 500px’d best the snap locations and written all over your printed-out landmark sheets from TripAdvisor. The only thing missing? Some time to sit-back and take it all in.

All too often abroad I see other travellers running circles around me, rushing from attraction to attraction to tick it off their list, battling wind and rain to ‘complete’ the city, too focused on seeing everything to enjoy it. My advice? Lose the itinerary, get yourself lost, wander, randomly engage with locals.

As someone who loves coffee I often find myself attracted to the various cute coffee shops a city has to offer, preferring to indulge in a session of people-watching and chatting to the barista about his/her favourite spots in the city over charging about in the rain.

I find that people forget that about travelling, that the vibe of the location is just as central to the culture as the architecture. Don’t get me wrong, each city has its must-sees: London has Big Ben, New York contains the Statue of Liberty and no visit to Barcelona is complete without a cheeky picture in front of the Sagrada Familia, but, beyond that, you could fill a two week vacation at each  location and not see every attraction on your TripAdvisor list so remember to relax, take a break, don’t just charge through the cobbled streets of Barcelona’s Old Town taking pictures just to be able to say you were there, sit down at one of the bars along the road and order a jug of sangria, the science museum will still be standing tomorrow.

I’m generally terrible at taking my own advice, but upon returning from a recent visit to China, it struck me as to how different my trip would have been had I forced myself to go through with all of the activities I’d researched. By slowing down and spend more time communicating with the locals I was able to take part in a traditional tea ceremony at a tea plantation (rather than it just be a picture stop-off before moving on), get filmed for a Chinese docu-series in a temple up a hill (still not entirely sure how that one came about) and, by just getting lost instead of micro-managing, was able to find the hidden gems glossed over by tourists.

Love your experience, not just the break

This is the phrase that I’d want to leave y’all with at the end of the first post. Love your experience. A holiday isn’t just about getting away from school or work, it’s a stress-free adventure. Remember to come back to the real world with more than pictures of pretty scenes in your camera, but with a smile having genuinely loved it.

Thanks for reading my first post (things will improve I promise). We at Latte.Wanderer have some fun plans for future articles including our upcoming ‘Visit Like a Local’ series of city guides based on recommendations of attractions, restaurants and experiences from people who live in the city!

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram (“latte.wanderer”) and we’ll post on there when the next post is up and tag us in any travel photos you think should be featured!

Until next time, I'm off to grab a coffee..