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Food

New York Coffee Bars

New Yorkers take their coffee very seriously, so naturally I had to check out several spots considered to be at the top of the NY short list serving the best brew in town.

At the top of my list is Stumptown. Located in the very happening Flatiron area of New York, Stumptown is a European style stand-up coffee bar. No sitting around whiling away the day here, this is business. With no tables, limited pastry items and an abbreviated coffee menu you have to figure the coffee has to be good and you’d be right. I ordered a picture perfect cappuccino. Smooth, rich and delicious to the last drop. Thank goodness they had the sense to open one in Los Angeles.

Next stop was The Randolph on Broome. This is the spot if you like your coffee served up in dive bar style. A mish-mash of flea market furniture gives The Randolph a bohemian feel and you can just imagine some kind of poetry readings happening here. I decided this was the type of place to sample an honest cup of joe so that’s what I ordered. The Randolph brews up a variety of roasts from The Brooklyn Roasting Company. My cup was a dark, slightly smokey roast which suited me just fine. I left feeling I had channeled my inner beatnik.

Finally on my short list was 9th Street Espresso. 9th Street has a number of locations but I checked out the one in the Lombardy Hotel on 56th Street near Park Avenue. I have to admire a coffee bar that has the confidence to stick to only four basic coffee drinks in a world populated by coffee drinks whose names you can barely remember. I ordered an espresso with milk. Dark and strong, smooth with no bitterness. Worked for me.

The National

If you’re a fan of Food Network’s shows Chopped and Iron Chef you know the name of celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian. The National is one of Chef Zakarian’s two New York restaurants, the other being the Lamb’s Club.

The National offers up excellently prepared American fare with a French leaning. We tried the National for both brunch and dinner. At brunch, I ordered the pan seared bronzino. A generous portion of fish came perfectly cooked on a silky bed of pureed butternut squash flecked with pomegranate seeds and a side salad of frisee. I darn near licked my plate. My husband had the house cured gravlax with the usual accompaniments of tomato, onion and capers and it didn’t disappoint either.

Dinner was a slightly different story. Although our salads were sensational, his an iceberg wedge with crispy bacon and blue cheese and mine, a roasted root vegetable salad with goat cheese, we both ordered the steak and frites. Although the steak, a New York cut, was perfectly cooked and actually very tasty meat, it was tough. And curiously, the frites (of the menu name steak & frites) came out nearly five minutes after our entrees, although they were delicious and perfectly crispy and salty. A plate of housemade cookies and a coffee semifreddo with espresso ice cream were also excellent.

Grand Central Station Oyster Bar

The Grand Central Station Oyster Bar has been shucking them out for over 100 years. Located below Grand Central Terminal one has to wander past an assortment of food stalls, vendors of all types and shoeshine stations until you find it. The original vaulted and tiled ceilings along with checkered tablecloths and unpretentious but efficient service make it an old school N.Y. experience.

The menu is huge and everything is fresh, but for my money, the raw bar, chowders and pan roasts are where it’s at. The Oyster Bar, as the name suggests, maintains a long list of oyster varieties, but I am a sucker for Blue Points.

My dozen came out, plump, briny and absolutely delicious. Next, I ordered a pan roast. A pan roast is a spicier version of a seafood stew. The oyster bar offers them with almost any shellfish you can imagine, or a combination of whatever you like. I ordered up a decadent pan roast of lobster and scallops.

P.S. If you can snag a couple of seats at the bar, do, as it’s fun to watch the cooks prepare the pan roasts in the old steam cauldrons they’ve been using since 1913.

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