A nearby coffee house is a small, good thing. At least it can be. It is also, today, a rare thing. With the sprawl of Starbuck's, the comfortable propinquity of a neighborhood café has become as endangered as the cobbler, the knife sharpener or the watch repairman. So I am fortunate to be about 50 strides from one of the best coffee houses in Brooklyn. Or am I cursed?
Oslo Coffee Co. has two locations: the first is a large store strewn with magazines and tables and woven by well-traversed airiness on Roebling Avenue in south Williamsburg; the second is a small shop with bar minimalist bar seating in north Williamsburg, on Bedford, near my apartment. The baristas move between the two workplaces with surprising fluidity. This gives each shop familiarity and allows me to tip on a can-do basis, alternating change and dollar bills to ensure an even 25% that, I believe, baristas deserve. This also means that the baristas I find infelicitous and fickle pop into my life when I would have them elsewhere.
This is a problem. Oslo has at least three baristas who, if I see them and can make it to the next point in my life without extracurricular stimuli, deter my patronage. And this is painful. Oslo makes my second favorite espresso drink: a cortado. Other places can make it, but Oslo advertises their skill in this area and thereby encourages one to enjoy this creamy drink. A cortado is an espresso tempered with steamed milk without foam. Oslo adds a bit of decorative foam for the efficacy of foam art, a leaf or a heart, but the steamed milk cuts the acidity of espresso deliciously.
When I see the barista whose sobriquet will be "J" I saunter in and enjoy his cheerful banter; when I peer in and witness the barista who will be called "X" I speed my gate and usually settle for a frustration and discontent.
Occasionally, I order an iced coffee drink. Oslo has the best Iced Coffees, and they seem prouder of those than their cortado. The iced latte is a real treat made with organic, Clover brand milk. Iced coffee and café au lait is made with chilled coffee so that the buyer is not left with a watered down drink. There are also specials such as the curious "rocket" which claimed to bear four espresso shots in a coffee with steamed milk and caramel. I passed that experiment in re-animation alchemy but found it utterly fascinating. "J" informed me it was quite popular.
The espresso is delicious, but Oslo does not roast their own beans, so they are dependent on the selection and quality of their purveyors. The product is consistent, however. The macchiato is served with a careful dollop that melts like butter in thick, earthenware espresso cups that keep the aromatic brew at the proper temperature throughout drinking and idling.
Oslo sells coffee by the pound and can grind to taste in an antique grinder that comes straight out of a Felini film. T-shirts of inscrutable purpose (Japanese bunny-people printed on teal Ts escape my interpretive skills and perhaps the skills of anyone less than Chomsky or Bloom) sell at a glacier pace. J had never sold one and seemed surprised that they were still pinned up to the wall, like archaic ciphers or graffiti hieroglyphs.
Besides the HR problems, Oslo is a real boon. In many ways their shady hiring policies serve to monitor my coffee intake and that fiscal category I fail to monitor: out-of-pocket, unexpected necessities. read more