Geeky Coffee in Chelsea Means A Blue Bottle Coffee Siphon Bar

In the race to see which town can be the most coffee-nerdiest, New York City has long been playing catch-up to our second-best-in-everything-else friends in the northwest, in places like Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. But with the second Manhattan Stumptown coming this spring to the West Village, the continued successful expansion of the likes of Joe the Art of Coffee, and, especially, the grand opening last weekend of the much-anticipated new Blue Bottle Coffee location in a one-time loading dock in Chelsea NYC, complete with an insanely geeky halogen-powered Siphon Bar, well… let's just say New York has amped up our coffee game in a big way.  

New Chelsea Blue Bottle Coffee Shop Introduces Fruity Siphon Coffee to Midtown

Blue Bottle Chelsea has so many good things going on that, for coffee-lovers, this is a truly a destination java spot. Let's start with the deservedly hyped Blue Bottle Chelsea Siphon Bar, where we sat for about an hour on Sunday and snacked and watched and learned and drank some of the most unusual and, in its way, exceptionally good cups of coffee we've ever had. The Siphon Bar is up a few stairs in the back of Blue Bottle Coffee, where a half-dozen stools put you right in front of the coffee Siphon itself, a steampunky apparatus that apparently can be found in cities throughout Japan but is certainly new to us. We won't pretend to really understand what's going on here, despite the extremely friendly, impressively focused siphonist's best efforts to educate us, but we will say this: a beaker-ish glass of bright, fruity, siphon-ated coffee is different from anything we've had before. 

Also in the back, and we thought providing an even tastier cup of coffee, Blue Bottle coffee shop offers what they call a Nel drip, which, we learned (again, these guys don't mind talking about their craft at all), is like a regular drip but with a thicker, almost flannel filter, so the pour is a lot slower, and the coffee a lot more… molasses-ish. There are plenty of top-notch, housemade baked goods on hand here at Blue Bottle Coffee Co. as well: we had the thick-sliced Brioche with butter and jam (very good) and the Mast Brothers Double Chocolate Cookie (very VERY good), but it all looks delicious. And up front at the "regular" coffee bar you can get a cup of the more conventionally first-rate Blue Bottle drip, as well as iced coffees (available creamy and smooth, New Orleans style), espressos, cappuccinos, Gibraltars… basically, Blue Bottle Chelsea is a coffee-lover's paradise. For those so inclined, this is not to be missed. 

Blue Bottle Coffee NYC: Now open in Chelsea

THe new Blue Bottle Coffee location in NYC is on 15th Street, just east of 10th Avenue, as is open on Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00. The Siphon and Nel Drip Bar is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. For more information about all things Blue Bottle, please see their website, here.  

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