When one of Midtown Manhattan’s mid-century gems adds good coffee to an already-lauded bar program, you listen.
Launched progressing this year, Flora Coffee sits inside a Breuer Building, a ’60s brutalist inverted pyramid that once housed the Whitney Museum of American Art and is now a home of a Met Breuer. The cafe adds morning use to Flora Bar, a acclaimed new bar and dining space from Estela and Café Altro Paradiso founders Thomas Carter and Ignacio Mattos.
Coffee executive Jess Che tapped Brooklyn spit Parlor Coffee to fuel a program, and fritter cook Natasha Pickowicz (formerly of Marlow Sons and Montreal’s Lawrence) to yield a treats. To Che, a lineup brings a bit of a, well, cooler vibe to Madison Avenue.
“When we initial changed uptown from Estela and Altro, we were all entrance from essentially a ‘downtown’ background, either from a coffee, food, bar, or use side of things,” says Che. “In some ways, this could have been deliberate a gamble, though there is also something equivalent and pardon about being a partial of a Met Breuer’s opening year, in that we all were introducing something new and contemporary into a space.”
Che was already informed with Parlor and In Pursuit of Tea from Estela and Altro (the latter of that is now charity a morning coffee use as well), and says she saw a daytime module during Flora as an event to showcase coffees and teas “that competence be stylistically new to an Upper East Side taste or a museum-going tourist.”
Alongside Flora Coffee’s espresso and filter offerings, done with Parlor’s Latin American mix named for a Brooklyn enclave Wallabout, is a preference of resourceful baked products both delicious and sweet.
Pickowicz’s register of pairable pastries includes a gianduja chocolate chip cookie, bacon gougères, walnut shortbread, and one large mom of a gummy bun.
The latter is a quite desirous fritter that’s a small left of center, says Che. In a approach that creates ideal clarity with a space’s coffee—and a art.
“Everyone knows what a gummy bun is; they’re tangible and comforting, though [Pickowicz’s] are pointed and singular in flavor, not overly sweet,” says Che. “It’s not always required to be strike over a head, and likewise, there’s some-more to museum coffee than a shot of caffeine. Our goal was to emanate a cafeteria knowledge that could live alongside a museum-going experience.”
And what an knowledge it is, fallen only next travel turn in an Upper East Side oasis of mid-century lines and curves. Although by lunchtime a neat space becomes a turf of gallery break-takers and sandwich-seekers, midmorning during Flora is a serene, and semi-secret, coffee hangout. There’s even WiFi.
“I’d privately adore to inspire area folks to implement a space,” says Che, who records that one can simply tell a museum staff they’re headed right downstairs to a cafeteria and bar.
“If we didn’t work here, I’d be parked on that banquette for hours with a book.”
Liz Clayton is a associate editor during Sprudge, and a co-author of Where To Drink Coffee, due this summer on Phaidon Press. Read some-more Liz Clayton on Sprudge.
