Fables of the Reconstruction: New Yorkers say their coffee has finally arrived
Posted by TheShot on 14 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
Over the years, we’ve dropped notes about New York City’s coffee culture: from its origins as a desolate wasteland through its more recent redemption. Like the awkward and homely tomboy who first gussies herself up for the debutant ball, in the past year New York City has been running a major publicity campaign to promote their coffee “arrival”. (“We matter! Really!”) One of the latest examples is Edible Manhattan’s recent article, “Coffee Groundswell”, penned by Liz Clayton: Bean Scene | May-June 2009.
The article is a pretty good recap of the story we all already know: New York prides itself as the center of everything cultural; for decades the provincial corners of the country sipped fine espresso while New Yorkers were forced to chug swill; and after the turn of the millennium things started to turn around. We can overlook Ms. Clayton’s telling use of the word “coffeerati” and a little too much focus on the gadgetry of the Clover brewer as a proxy for good coffee. But we couldn’t overlook the main focus of the piece, which is clearly reflected in its subtitle: “Gotham joe finally catches up”.
Why? Because it hasn’t caught up. For the most part, New York is still the wagging tail of coffee dogs from the more provincial parts of America: Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Durham, etc.
We can sympathize with the regional shame that must exist when a post-Communist reconstruction Prague served quality “Seattle style” coffee from independent cafés years before New York City seemed to even consider it. But the anxious desire to wash away that shame could conceivably create a skewed state of self-perception. Ms. Clayton’s piece very much rings a “we have arrived!” bell to the rest of the country, putting us all on notice that we have no reason to snicker and sneer over that backwoods on the Hudson.
“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. “
But to have truly arrived, you need to have a coffee culture of your own — and quality coffee solidly remains an import, not an export, market in New York. So instead of New York’s true arrival on the coffee scene, what we have more is a city that’s akin to a sunken ship being exhumed from its watery grave through the mutual aid of foreign prospectors.
The New York coffee “Gold Rush” is dominated by an invasion of professionals from the aforementioned provincial cities and towns, looking to fill NY’s great coffee void while seizing potentially great business opportunities. New York has become to coffee what China became to Western product marketers when economic trade barriers first opened up: an opportunity to access millions of potential new customers, long shielded from the outside, and the corresponding promise of potential riches.
Sure, with the likes of Gimmie! and Ninth Street Espresso, New York can claim a few years of native influence. It’s also good to see New York roasters doing more to boost their local relevance. But to make a crude comparison using Seattle’s two most notable 1990s cultural exports, quality coffee and grunge, Seattle can boast Nirvana, the Melvins, and Pearl Jam while New York has the Stone Temple Pilots (OK, they were from San Diego) — but yet little else to show for themselves.
And it’s not just that people expect New York City to lead cultural trends, rather than to dawdle in following them. For a city of its size and population, the market penetration of quality coffee is still lousy. (Or, as we put it in a recent post, the ratio of quality coffee shops to New York residents rivals that of Toby Keith fans in North Korea.) New York residents deserve to have good coffee in the same per-capita abundance currently available in, say, Los Angeles — which itself was a coffee wasteland until a few years ago.
I may be able to now find quality coffee in New York, but I wouldn’t put Gotham on my list of coffee destinations anytime soon. Until at least that much happens, any “catching up” is still a work in progress.
3 Comments »
I think the difference is the sheer volume of cafes serving quality coffee, and serving it seriously. Even if they don’t all roast themselves. It’s almost impossible to roast in NYC. It takes a ton of time and money to navigate through the bureaucracy and regulations that are in place. I mean, take a look at this map and see how many places are already squeezed into a very tiny (and expensive) city.
NYC Espresso Map
It’s true there’s not much diversity as far as roasters are concerned, but the list of cafes serving quality coffee has grown exponentially.
The storefront expense was a big consideration while I was writing it. Both for cafés and the necessary sales volume to pay for a rented storefront and the more daunting issues of roasting and zoning laws. It could explain why many of the best coffee shops often started in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan — just as cities such as San Francisco gave birth to great coffee shops in lower rent districts such as the Mission, Potrero Hill, etc.
But it’s not like the same economic forces behind gentrification and urban renewal (or yuppification, however you want to look at it) do not exist in New York. As for roasting operations, I don’t know enough about the local regulations. But I would find it hard to believe that places like Bay Ridge, Harlem, Howard Beach, or the South Bronx would go all NIMBY on a quality roasting operation in the hood. They are de rigueur in the equivalent neighborhoods of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and even Chicago.
Still, New York needs to find the beat of its own drumming. As much as things have clearly improved there, it’s still far from being a destination.
Perhaps most telling is the comment that these new shops have “made preparing perfect coffee a legitimate career, the coffee bar’s equivalent of the wine world’s sommeliers”.
Not until there are married men and women with families who are baristas have we reached that level. Sadly, the current barista-culture is somewhat alien to that.