Bob Peyton’s sleek espresso bar in formerly foreboding Alphabet City is a magnet for caffeine-starved hipsters. And me…decidedly not a hipster. Still, I like their espresso – a lot – and I like their music. I was glad to hear the Strokes’ “Take it or Leave It” and Nirvana’s “Dumb” fill the room. Given the killer combination, I wasn’t surprised to discover Peter Meehan recently selected Ninth Street Espresso as one of the city’s top espresso bars, in a recent New York Times write-up.
Peyton starts with Counter Culture Coffee beans, imported from Durham, North Carolina. According to Meehan, Peyton uses exactly 21 grams of coffee for each 2 to 2¼ ounce shot of espresso. He uniformly applies 30 pounds of pressure to the grounds and brews the coffee at precisely 203 degrees. Peyton is that committed to brewing the perfect espresso. He then gauges baristas by the amount of leaf- or fern-shaped fronds they can artfully pour using milk. Peyton has supposedly poured a 28-leaf “rosetta,” though none of my drinks topped a dozen.
Ninth Street Espresso is out of the way, but well worth a sojourn. With a huge window and plenty of natural light, it’s also a relaxing place to sit and read the paper. And the music is hard to beat. Plus, despite the pirate theme, the staff is incredibly friendly.
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