To alleviate the claustrophobia of our fun and trendy but very small apartment, I undertook to find the perfect café in which to idle away an afternoon, comfortably insulated from the harsh reality of New York life. I was searching for a haven to provide succour to all the senses: deliciously aromatic coffees and cakes, comfy seating that invited me to stay, attractive décor, and the right level of background noise, either music or the rumble of conversation.
Unfortunately for me, as well as my addictions to café lattes and cakes, I also indulge in the socially less acceptable addiction to nicotine. This dramatically reduces the number of coffee shops that feel like a home from home. But I did succeed in finding some more tolerant establishments in which to indulge my outlawed habit. Starbucks is certainly not among them.
My local coffee shop on West 11th Street was Tartine, a tiny little corner shop that manages to squeeze in a few more customers by placing tables on the pavement outside. But demand still exceeds supply, resulting in long 'lines' for brunch. I had always thought that queuing was a particularly English tradition, but as with so many things, the Americans have taken our idea and done it bigger and better. They will wait patiently to get into the 'in' places, come rain, sleet or snow. The pastries there are undeniably delicious, my favourite being the apple tarte fine, served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. But despite repeated efforts, I never managed to fathom the workings of the kitchen schedule. I would arrive, craving a tarte fine, to be told that warm pastries are only available after 11.30am. Or wanting just a coffee, to be told that if I wanted a table I would have to eat some lunch. Or wanting some lunch, to be told that only coffee and cold pastries were available. So soon I was in search of less rigidly timetabled hunting grounds.
One of my favourite places is the Café Mona Lisa, on Bleecker Street and 7th Avenue, despite the fact that it relegates smokers to a very second-rate area, facing the noisy avenue, and rewards the virtuous weed-free with a cosy, cushioned boudoir facing the quieter street. Gilded fin-de-siêcle mirrors hang on the walls, angled slightly downwards to allow a better view of one's fellow escapees from reality. Chandeliers embellished with gold-sprayed knives and forks provide just enough light to appreciate the perfect beauty of the brown sugar topping on a huge slice of sour cream and apple pie.
Over on Waverley Place is a fine French eatery, called Les Deux Gamins, which in true Gallic fashion allows the Gitane-smokers priority in the front area of the restaurant, while healthier individuals may take their exercise by going up a few steps to the non-smoking area. Each day a new bon mot is chalked up on a small board, and magazines and newspapers are also provided for the edification of the customers. The salads are excellent, as is the toasted baguette with home-made preserve. The seating arrangements are a little cosy, but this can be a great ice-breaker. On one particular occasion, an American gentleman and his married Argentinian mistress on the next table felt the need to share with me the details of their illicit romance, including too much information about the depth of their love for each other, which interfered badly with the digestion of my food.
A major factor in our choice of Greenwich Village as an ideal neighbourhood was the Factory Café on Christopher Street. Its antique French-style sofas and atmosphere of low-level buzz welcomed me in one dark and rainy September afternoon. And its comfortably low lighting concealed from me the fact that the entire clientele consisted of gay men. It was not until a subsequent visit when my entrance was met with the kind of reaction where conversations stop in mid-sentence, that I realised that I was the only female patron.
The Caffe del' Artista, on Greenwich Avenue, no longer permits smoking, although if asked very nicely, they will sometimes close the door of a tiny room at the back to allow the closet smoker to feel like they are genuinely smoking in a closet. This little room has a particularly fascinating table, which has a drawer containing an assortment of shopping receipts, scraps of notepaper, tickets and general paper debris, to which people have committed to writing their deepest, darkest secrets, varying from the mundane and predictable ('I'm gay', and this is Greenwich Village, the East Coast's gay capital) to the bizarre ('I am a CIA agent, and I can disclose that the President is in fact a hologram'). I can't recall what the coffee and cakes were like, as I was far too engrossed to take any notice.
As a good old dependable, I go to Caffé Rafaella on Seventh Avenue. It is related to the Café Mona Lisa, and the menus are identical, but the ambiance is not. The Rafaella is rather more austere, with high-backed dining chairs and wooden floors. But it does have the significant advantage of an east-facing outdoor seating space, so makes a good brunch venue in the summer, if you can stand the noise and fumes.
If I had to identify a winner, I would have to concur with the Zagat guide, and nominate, as a general all-rounder, Grey Dogs Coffee, on Carmine Street. It has a studenty, informal buzz, smoking tables at the front, great coffee (sometimes with a doggy paw print embossed into the foam on a caffe latte) and very generously proportioned hunks of lusciously moist zucchini cake. In fact everything there is served in hospitably extravagant proportions, from the deli-style sandwiches to the Rice krispies treats.
New York has been tagged 'the city that never sleeps', and with this many good coffee shops to fuel its caffeine levels, I'm not surprised.
Lola Van Baaren visited New York in January 2001
60 THOMPSON, 60 Thompson (00 1 212 431 0400; fax: 431 0200; www.60thompson.com)
NOBU, 105 Hudson Street (00 1 212 219 0500). Expensive TriBeCa haunt crammed with celebrities.
OTHER USEFUL CONTACTS
Less expensive but equally charming restaurants include Elaines (00 1 212 233 0507) on Upper East Side, the Odéon (00 1 212 233 0507) in TriBeCa and the Café Luxembourge (00 1 212 873 7411) on the Upper West Side