Café Grumpy - Greenpoint

The original Grumpy, next door to the roastery

Coffee is roasted a door away, which is the simplest thing to know about Café Grumpy in Greenpoint: this is the original branch, open in Brooklyn since 2005, and the roastery sits beside it. The company was started by Caroline Bell and Chris Timbrell, and beans are roasted daily in the neighborhood, so this café sits closer to the roasting program than any other in the group. The list runs on house blends and rotating single origins. Momentum is the Central and South American blend, with malted milk chocolate, caramel and orange in it, and Heartbreaker is the house espresso. Single origins move through the bar, recent examples including Colombia Esmeralda Reserve and Peru La Vicuña, listed with producer, varietal and elevation.

Room enough to stay

It is the largest of the Café Grumpy cafés and it behaves that way, a place to settle in, work, study or meet someone rather than a kiosk to pass through. The front looks compact and then the room runs back much further than expected. An eight-person communal table sits in the front window, with small two-tops, a bench by the door, and a back room of four-person tables, round tables and cocktail-height tables under tall narrow windows and exposed brick. There are power outlets, which tells you what the room is for.

Order Heartbreaker, or keep it to batch brew

Heartbreaker is the first order, the house espresso blend and the clearest statement of what the roastery is doing. It is built on Las Brisas from Huila in Colombia and Kochere from Yirgacheffe in Ethiopia, and it holds up brewed as well as it does as espresso. The bar usually carries Heartbreaker on espresso alongside a single-origin espresso and a decaf, plus batch brew and a range of teas. Batch brew does the filter job here rather than a pour-over bar, which suits the pace of a room this size. Food is a supporting act, cakes and pastries and a small run of baked goods rather than a kitchen menu, so plan a visit around the cup and take the pastry as company.