% Arabica

Spanish Latte, then the pour-over

The Spanish Latte is the order the brand travels on, sweet and milk-heavy and consistent from city to city, and it is where a first visit should start. After that the interesting cup is a single-origin pour-over, which strips away the sugar and the milk and leaves you with whatever the roaster has been working on lately. The latte is also the fairest comparison you can make against the brand's other counters, since the recipe travels.

Espresso-based drinks cover the everyday middle, and the Matcha Latte is the non-coffee signature. That matters more here than it would elsewhere: the brand came out of Kyoto, and matcha is not a concession on this menu.

A roastery with a bakery attached

The DUMBO room puts the roasting and the baking on show in the same space as the counter. Beans are roasted on site, pastries come out of an open bakery, and the layout is arranged so customers can see both operations rather than only the till. Seeing the roaster in the room changes how the coffee reads: the single-origin pour-over stops being a line on a menu and becomes a demonstration of what the machinery behind the counter has been doing.

Order a croissant or one of the Japanese-style baked goods to see what the bakery half is for. House pastries change the calculation on a % Arabica visit, which in most cities is a drinks-only proposition, and they give the Brooklyn branch a reason to be treated as a destination rather than a refueling stop.

Minimalist, Japanese, in Brooklyn

The design is what the brand is known for: clean lines, bright natural light, a minimalist Japanese-inspired counter that leaves the machinery and the people as the only real decoration. It is orderly rather than warm, and it is built to move a queue without feeling like it is rushing anyone. The wait is part of the design: watching the bar work is what you do while you stand there.

The shop is listed in the Eater Coffee Guide and the Infatuation Coffee Guide, which puts it among the coffee bars New York editors send people to. Both are guide placements rather than rankings, so read them as an editor's shortlist rather than a score. Take the shop as a design-led counter with a working roastery behind it, and order the Spanish Latte before anything else.