I have been on vaycay, my friends, but now I have returned home to my wee apartamiento. My spring break traveling consisted of two major locations, one of which I will reveal now:
New York City!
Besides seeing the lovely Alicia Silverstone* live and in person on Broadway (in her current show also starring Laura Linney, Time Stands Still), I walked a bunch and visited numerous top-notch coffee shops and vegan restaurants. This installment of my NYC posts contains fragments of my coffee adventures. (*who happens to be vegan!)
The fam and I stumbled upon Chelsea Market by accident as we navigated the streets of New York, as I was on a never-ending search for espresso shops to try. We were using my dad's iPhone to map everything, but what this failed to inform us of was that Ninth Street Espresso was hidden inside the market!
I had an incredible soy cappuccino here (unpictured). These ladies and gentlemen know what they're doing when it comes to coffee.
Also of note inside Chelsea Market was a One Lucky Duck store! I didn't know 1LD had this hidden location. (But don't try to get your Almond Buttercup ice cream there because this store doesn't stock the ice cream...boohoohoo.) In essence, Chelsea Market is a farmer's market of sorts, made up of local fine food businesses. I didn't see much produce there, but the point is that this market is awesome because it is like a mall food court for foodies (meaning no chain restaurants). Wee!
The second-best soy cappuccino of my trip came from none other than Cafe Grumpy. My espresso research indicated that Grumpy is an outstanding espresso shop, and my lovely beverage confirmed this. My dad got a mocha, and the latte art was better on that, so here's a photograph:
The logo for this shop is a cute grumpy pouty face. See it on the window, behind the potted plant? I love it!
The Synesso espresso machine is well-known in the specialty coffee world for being um like amazing. Cafe Grumpy had one of those! I think this is the only major brand of commercial espresso machines that I haven't gotten to play on yet.
Also, I must must MUST mention the spot of the best cappuccino of my entire life. I have had many, many great ones, but one from Stumptown Coffee Roasters at the New York Ace Hotel topped the top ones. I was embarrassed to be surrounded by such espresso majesty that I didn't snap a picture. I sure hope you'll forgive me, but you can find many more capp pictures in the Ruby Red archives, yo. Anyway though, what I loved about my soy cappuccino was how incredibly sweet the espresso was, and the drink was built so delicately and gently, with great love. Mmm... I actually went to Stumptown twice on the trip, as it was a mere one mile walk from my hotel.
This particular Stumptown cafe also sells Mast Brothers Chocolate, a bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Brooklyn. I've heard great things about this chocolate but didn't buy any because I did not have the extra cash on me! (Stumpy-lovely is a cash-only shop.) And I forgot to bring back whole bean coffee from them too! Double lose.
[Edit: Okay, so I had a very silly picture of me here. I just deleted it though because I started to become embarrassed by how unattractively not funny it was...]
I shall be back with more adventures and with the revealing of mystery vaycay destination number two!
