This colorful history explores New York’s coffee culture from the brew’s initial arrival in the 1600s to today’s artisanal connoisseurs. The coffee industry was made for New complex, diverse, fascinating and full of attitude. Since arriving in seventeenth-century New Amsterdam, coffee held patriotic significance during wartime, fueled industrial revolution and transformed the city's foodways. The New York Coffee Exchange opened tumultuously in the Gilded Age. Alice Foote MacDougall founded a 1920s coffeehouse empire. In the same decade, Brooklyn teenager William Black started Chock Full o’Nuts with $250 and a dream. Today, third wave coffeeshops like Joe and Ninth Street Espresso offer single origin pour overs and push the limits of latte art. Through stories, interviews and photographs, author and coffee professional Erin Meister shares Gotham’s caffeinated past and explores the coffee-related reasons why the city never sleeps.
I love coffee more than most things, and I love NYC more than most places. After a recent trip to the big apple, indulging in as much dirty bean water as my body could hold, I got so interested in history of how coffee became such an iconic part of New York’s culture. Enter, this book.
This book is the perfect, witty, smart telling of exactly where coffee got its start in NYC and how it shaped the culture and everything in between. A marvelous read for anyone who has an interest in these delicious caffeinated beans !!
One of my new favorites in the historical nonfiction genre! It was such a fun & informative read. The author’s passion and experience are obvious. I learned so much.