I roast on Tuesdays. One drum, six origins on rotation, and a notebook I'd rather not show you.
Espresso from 5, orange wine from 6, beer when you ask for it. I pour the way I roast — by feel.
Pull up a stool — there's usually a horn in the corner by 9. Quiet nights are quiet on purpose.
Cloudy, salted-strawberry, a faint note of bread crust. Drinks like a memory of summer. We open it at five and it's usually gone by nine.
A 3oz cup of this week's espresso, a stem of saison, an orange wine, a quiet red. The only way to taste the whole bar in one sitting.
Crushed black cherry, white pepper, the texture of well-water. We chill it slightly because Buck likes it that way and so do you.
A peppered, sun-dried farmhouse from our neighbors at Folksbier. Lives on the third tap and goes well with everything we don't serve as food.
Twenty-two feet of rolled zinc, oxidising into its own grey patina since opening night. It marks every wine ring, every cup, and never apologises for it.
A friend turned this on a lathe out of a salvaged cherry beam. It pours nitro coffee in the afternoon, saison after dark. The wood smells faintly of coffee now.
A 5-kilo roaster, electric, second-hand. Buck calls it stubborn. It runs once a week and the whole block smells like a Sunday morning.
No cover, no reservations for music. Show up, sit down, listen. Empty rows are quiet by design.
One drum. Six origins on rotation. A notebook I keep meaning to throw out.
I roast on Tuesday afternoons, the bar opens at five the same day, and what I pulled out of the drum hits the espresso machine the following Friday. That's the lead time. Nothing older than fourteen days, nothing fresher than three.
If you're in the neighbourhood between one and four on a Tuesday — the door is open. You can sit at the end of the bar, watch, and ask whatever you like. I won't promise to answer.
The bar sits on Newkirk Plaza, a triangle of brick and old elm trees that the Q train surfaces underneath. Most nights we're the warmest light on the block.
We seat walk-ins at the zinc bar most of the night. Tables, high-tops, and booths are best reserved — call us. We're slow on email and we mean that.