Tag Archives: Cafe Grumpy

Café Grumpy, Greenpoint

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The famous Café Grumpy logo on a background of wood with multiple coffee stains, taken from above the counter in the first Café Grumpy in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.I first came across Café Grumpy in 2015, the Aussie-owned coffee shop/roaster chain firmly establishing itself as one of my New York City favourites. In particular, its Lower East Side and Fashion District locations become regular stops on my various visits. Since I’m staying in Chelsea this time around, I was looking forward to returning to Café Grumpy on W 20th Street, where I had my first Café Grumpy experience. My only problem is that it recently closed, forced out by a new landlord who wouldn’t renew the lease.

Deprived of my local Café Grumpy fix, I headed across the East River to Greenpoint in Brooklyn, seeking out the original Café Grumpy on Meserole Avenue. Home to Café Grumpy since 2005, the roastery is half a block away down Diamond Street. From the outside, it looks small, tucked in on the corner, but inside it goes a long way back, making it the most spacious of the Café Grumpys (now up to 10 in New York City, with one in New Jersey and another in Miami). There’s the usual offering, with the Heartbreaker blend, a single-origin and decaf on espresso, plus batch-brew, a range of tea and a selection of cakes and pastries.

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Café Grumpy, Nolita

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The Cafe Grumpy logo from the bottom of the menu on the wall of the Nolita branch.Café Grumpy has become my favourite New York City coffee shop/roastery chain, particularly since I discovered the Lower East Side location a few minutes’ walk from my usual hotel. So I was delighted when I met up with Simon and Gemma, fellow coffee aficionados who I know from Instagram, and they told me about a new branch of Café Grumpy, conveniently located just around the corner from their hotel in Little Italy.

Located on Mott Street, Café Grumpy opened in the early summer, 2016, several months after my last visit to New York, so I didn’t feel too bad about not having known about it. It’s in an area already rich with coffee, just a couple of blocks down from another favourite, Gimme! Coffee, around the corner from old friends, Caffé Roma, and one street from the lovely Café Integral.

In keeping with the Café Grumpy philosophy, all the branches, no matter how large or small, carry the same full coffee offering, with the house-blend, Heartbreaker, joined by a single-origin and decaf on espresso, while on pour-over, there are multiple single-origins, plus decaf, supplemented by bulk-brew for those in a hurry. There’s also a range of tea, plus a selection of cakes and pastries if you’re hungry.

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Café Grumpy, Fashion District

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A flat white from Café Grumpy, in an orange, six-ounce tulip cup.Regular readers will know that I have a soft-spot for Brooklyn-based, Aussie-influenced roaster/coffee-shop chain, Café Grumpy. I first came across its Chelsea branch in 2015, before discovering that its Lower East Side branch is just around the corner from my hotel on my return in 2016. On that trip, I also discovered one of Café Grumpy’s more recent branches, right in the heart of New York City in the Fashion District.

This has all the hallmarks of Café Grumpy, including its trademark no laptop policy. While you can argue with the merits or otherwise of this, Café Grumpy’s very upfront about this. The coffee offering’s the same across all branches: house-blend, single-origin and decaf on espresso, five single-origins (including a decaf) on pour-over and two more on bulk-brew. It’s also worth remembering that while now it seems that everyone on the East Coast’s offering pour-over, Café Grumpy was doing it long before it was trendy.

In terms of layout, the Fashion District branch takes the no laptop philosophy to its logical conclusion. The seating consists of two large, communal tables, plus a bench at the back. While you can sit quietly by yourself, it really is designed to promote communication!

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Café Grumpy, Lower East Side

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Cafe Grumpy's grumpy face logo, hanging on the wall of the Lower East Side branch.Café Grumpy, a small, local coffee shop chain, roasts all its own beans in Brooklyn. With its no compromise attitude, it’s fast becoming one of my NYC favourites. The Lower East Side branch, on Essex Street, is the smallest and is perhaps my favourite (of those I’ve visited so far).

My go-to place for morning coffee used to be the original Pushcart Coffee on East Broadway. Just a few blocks east of my usual hotel in Chinatown, it was perfect. Then it closed and, for the last two years, I’ve been coffee-less first thing in the morning: not the ideal situation!

Embarrassingly, I only discovered Café Grumpy on my most recent trip, not realising that the Lower East Side branch had been open since 2012, some while before Pushcart closed. Just around the corner from my hotel, it’s every bit as convenient as Pushcart, so I needn’t have gone coffee-less all those mornings. What an oversight!

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Café Grumpy, Chelsea

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The somewhat unwelcoming Cafe Grumpy sign: an elongated oval, stylised as a face, with frowning eyebrows and a downturned mouth.I was introduced to Café Grumpy by Bluestone Lane, who told me about their fellow Aussies when I visited the Bluestone’s Broad Street branch. Two days later I was looking for somewhere for lunch, so I sought out Café Grumpy’s Chelsea branch on New York’s W 20th Street.

The first Café Grumpy opened in Brooklyn in 2005, while this is the second (of eight) branches of the bizarrely-named chain (I say this because, generally speaking, I find Aussies to be one of the most consistently upbeat of peoples, so to call your coffee shop chain “Café Grumpy” takes a certain sense of irony). Café Grumpy roasts all its own coffee in a dedicated roastery and has made its name with its pour-over coffee, which, in the land of the obligatory flask of batch-brew, is still something of a novelty.

If you like your espresso-based drinks, you’re also well-catered for, with the Heartbreaker seasonal blend joined on the Synesso espresso machine by a single-origin (a Kenya Peaberry during my visit) and decaf (from Costa Rica). There are also four single-origins on the pour-over menu (a Guatemalan, a Mexican and two Kenyans), one of which is also available through the aforementioned batch-brewer.

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