Coffee in NYC - definitive guide

I've received a lot of "hey did you see this?" e-mails since the NY Times published an exhaustive quality list two months back (with interactive map).

While the NYTimes is exhaustive, the author provides no real delineation between best and serviceable. Here's my organized guide, with 38 places still to visit!A Level - Best of the City

1. Abraco (east village)
2. Blue Bottle (williamsburg, chelsea)
3. Cafe Grumpy (williamsburg, chelsea, park slope) - note the park slope location is tiny!
4. Cafe Pedlar (cobble hill)
5. Culture Espresso (penn station)
6. Kaffe 1668 (tribeca)
7. Ninth Street Espresso (east village and chelsea)
8. Oslo (Williamsburg)
9. Stumptown Coffee (penn station)
10. Toby's Estate (williamsburg)
11. Third Rail Coffee (village)

B Level - Worth visiting

1. Bluebird (east village)
2. De Luxe (park slope)
3. Everyman Espresso (east village)
4. Gimme! Coffee (williamsburg, noLiTa)
5. Gorilla (park slope) - trending downwards after the coup de barista!
6. Joe (west village, chelsea, grand central) - somehow the chelsea shop makes better espresso drinks than the other locations
7. Ost (east village)
8. Sit & Wonder (prospect heights)
9. Maialino (madison park)
10. Tar Pit (Bushwick)

C Level - Fine

Birch (noWheresville)
La Colombe (tribeca)
Fort Defiance (red hook)
Glass Shop (prospect heights)
Ground Support (soho)Milk Bar (prospect heights)
Southside (park slope)Think Coffee (nyu-ville)
Iris Cafe (brooklyn heights)
Bakeri (Williamsburg)

D Level - Serviceable

1. Cafe Regular (park slope)
2. Clover Cafe (boerum hill)
3. Roots Cafe (park slope)
4. Roots & Vines (lower east side)
5. Van Leeuwen (trucks)

F Level - Avoid

1. Cafe Regular Du Nord (park slope)
2. Saturday Surf (soho)
3. Root Hill (Gowanus)
4. Jittery Joe's (midtown)

N/A - Not visited yet

1. Baba (williamsburg)
2. Beaner Bar (greenpoint)
3. Boneshakers (williamsburg)
4. Breukelen Coffee House (crown heights)
5. Brooklyn Label (greenpoint)
6. Cafe 474 (park slope)
7. Cafe Mocias (upper west side)
8. Champion Coffee (greenpoint)
9. Espresso 77 (queens)
10. Five Leaves (greenpoint)
11. Indian Road (inwood)
12. Knave (midtown)
13. Marlowe & Sons (williamsburg)
14. McNally Jackson (noLiTa)
15. Moomah (tribeca)
16. The National (lower east side)
17. Second Stop (williamsburg)
18. the Smile (east village)
19. Sweet Leaf (queens)
20. Variety Coffee (williamsburg AND greenpoint)
21. Village Tart (village)

October Cocktail - Gimlet

I was more interested in the process of making lime cordial than I was in the actual gin gimlet. Over the last 10 months, I've grown to like gin. I may even say it's my favorite distilled alcohol. Anyhow, after I read Toby Cecchini's T Magazine (recipe at the bottom) article on making lime cordial, I added this drink to A COCKTAIL A MONTH.

I tried Hendricks, Plymouth, and Bluecoat and thought that Bluecoat was easily the best match. I don't know if it's the better gin, but seemed to pair with lime much better.

Once you make the cordial, the drink is easy to make.

Ingredients

1. 2 oz. gin
2. 1 oz. lime cordial
3. lime wedge

Directions

1. Add ice to tumbler
2. Add cordial
3. Add gin
4. Stir
5. Garnish with a lime wedge

Prime Meats (no. 7 of 12)

We are definitely not getting to all 12 restaurants. But we did visit Prime Meats last week. And overall, it was meh. Though related, Prime Meats is not as tasty as Frankie's. The food is good. The ambiance nice. The service was fine. Nothing wrong with the place, but it's not one of the places we'd decidedly return to.

So what did we have?

We started with oysters from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They were excellent - fresh, briny, juicy and visually appealing.

SOS followed that with her typical first-time-in-a-restaurant-order of a burger. This $18 burger was fine, almost too fine. The patty was a perfect cylinder that exactly met the bun's edges. The toppings were all sliced uniformly and were seemingly fresh. In the end, the burger had two downfalls. First, she asked for it to be medium rare. After finishing it, there wasn't a drop of "juice" on the plate. It was too medium and not juicy enough. Second, it had no soul. It felt like a picture postcard representation of a burger. Maybe in 2011 Brooklyn, we're too used to some burgers having a strong bacon taste while others have a unique crust and others have a good deal of salt within the meat. This had no character, no soul.

I ordered the choucroute garnie. It's a classic Alsatian dish and the preparation was fantastic. The sauerkraut was equally sour, rich, and cabbage-y. Delicious. And the meats were rich and slightly gamy. We loved it.

We ordered a quartino of the most bland, unappealing wine I can remember. Strangely, it came from the very reputable negociant - Joseph Drouhin. This wine tasted watered-down.

Total, with tax and tip came to $80. Not crazy, not a value. Very meh.

September Cocktail - Margarita

Margarita. It's something most of us have pretty average experiences with. Think hard. Can you remember the last time you had a great margarita? If so, how much of that "great" connects to the place, the people, or time of year? My point is that a pretty average margarita can taste great on the first warm day of June after a long workday, especially when shared with great company.

I set out to try and make a great margarita even if drank alone, on a rainy night in September.

Three rules I learned through my tests:

1. You must shake a margarita vigorously. It needs the intense chill and the aeration.
   
2. Cointreau is much better than standard triple sec. It's a little extra, but worth it.
3. A salted rim adds positive complexity.

I tried a few tequilas and preferred Puro Verde. I'm not enough of an expert to describe why, but this produced the margarita I expected. There's no harshness in this tequila.

Ingredients for 1 margarita:

1. 2 ounces tequila (preferably blanco)
2. 1/2 ounce lime juice
3. 1/2 ounce Cointreau
4. 2 dashes citrus bitters (I used Bitter Truth Grapefruit)

Technique:

1. Use the spent lime rind to moisten the lip of a rocks glass.
2. Roll the glass through a plate of kosher salt.
3. Add ice to glass
4. Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker
5. Shake vigorously (more than you think you need to)
6. Pour into rocks glass.
7. Garnish with lime wheel

Char No. 4 (6 of 12)

Last Friday, SOS and I enjoyed a fine meal at Char No. 4. By and large, our impression of the restaurant was of a place with consistent and enjoyable food, yet not anything we couldn’t match at home (save the two steaks on the menu). The real draw is the whiskey list and the ability to taste so many. Char No. 4 will pour you 1 ounce of any whiskey they have.

I created a rye whiskey tasting by selecting three ryes that I hadn’t tasted before. And like most things, when you line up three of the “same” items in front of you, you’ll find differences and favorites (more on this later). To go with the whiskey, they made an excellent cocktail – the Noreaster – which is a Dark & Stormy with bourbon in lieu of Gosling’s rum - Mighty tasty.

We ordered 2 snacks, 2 appetizers, and 1 sandwich and felt stuffed. The two dishes most memorable were the snacks. The crispy cheddar curds were hot, crisp, buttery, and aromatic. The spicy peanuts and pickles were perfect as well. To me, both compliment the whiskey drinks really well. Where they bourbon or rye is sweet and served chilled, these were salty and warm.

The bacon arrived on a bed of micro-greens and corn kernels that were nice. And the chicken liver mousse was not interesting, but fine.

Lastly, we had the chopped pork sandwich. Again, it was fine, but the best component came in a tiny ramekin. It was pickled chili peppers in vinegar. They combined with the pork’s richness and fattiness perfectly. It was a delicious combination, yet I can’t say it stood out relative to sandwiches at Wildwood or Blue Smoke.

SOS ordered a rose that was flavorless. It was the only disappointing part of our experience.

Char No. 4 does all the basics well. We won't make a trip back anytime soon. But, if we were on Smith Street with time to kill and a hankering for cheese curds and/or whiskey – we’d be there.

The three whiskies:

1. Jefferson Rye (winner) - slightly tart and sweet with an enjoyable hot finish
   
2. Wild Turkey Russell's Rye - mostly heat, some oak (not too much), notably spicy
   
3. Wild Turkey 101 - all heat, a little molasses, but hard to detect much taste