Top 10 Bushwick Coffee Shops

A review of Bushwick and Bushwick-adjacent coffee shops.

This past Saturday, I took a tour of most, if not all, of the coffee shops in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The reason being, my wonderful girlfriend Sarah, founder of Tears of Venus, is putting on a maker’s market at Roberta’s Pizza on 4/27, and we ventured out on a cold and rainy day to put up fliers. I will also be there doing my own little closet and archive sale. Shameless plug out of the way, here is what I learned from my coffee shop tour of Bushwick.

My first observation is that you can place every Bushwick coffee shop on a spectrum of “this has been here for decades” and “the only reason this is here is gentrification”.

This is the scale I will use to grade all of the coffee shops I visited on Friday, to determine which coffee shop is the Best in Bushwick. Below is the list of all coffee shops reviewed, in no particular order:

• Swallow Cafe

• Dweebs

• Lazy Suzy

• Concrete Jungle

• Nook

• La Cabra

• Loveless/Spectrum

• Bushwick Bakery

• Brooklyn Kava

• Molasses Books

• SEY

• Dun-Well Donuts

• Cross Roads

While not a conclusive list of every coffee-purveyor in Bushwick, this day trip gave me the full picture of the caffeine-fiend scene in the neighborhood.

Before we begin, I want to pour one out for a lost icon: Drip. Located just 2 blocks from my first New York apartment, Drip was my go-to on any day I didn’t have my cold brew ready or didn’t want to wait for my Chemex to finish dripping. While it closed late last year, I am still mourning it. Black owned, but specializing in pour-overs, I’m going to lock it in right in the middle of our spectrum.

Now, into the reviews.

The first shop we visited, and our new go-to in the absence of drip, was Concrete Jungle. For those uninitiated, this coffee shop gets its name from the plethora of plants that greet anyone who walks in. Once you receive your coffee and sit down at one of the chairs that are literally playground swings, you immediately see why there are so many plants surrounding you; they are all for sale. And so are the trendy pots that hold them. To simplify my review, it certainly provides a nice environment to hang out in (even if there are some challenges to overcome with spacing (and tolerating sitting on a playground swing instead of an actual chair)) but all in the shop is clearly geared towards millennials fleeing the city or at least zoomers hopeful of upward mobility which clearly places it in the gentrification camp.

Next stop, Loveless. Some may know it as Spectrum (I’m still unclear what its official name is, but Loveless is what’s on the sign out front. It has also been a personal go-to as a substitution for drip. One time, I chance encountered Charlie Franco of Throwing Fits fame, outside of this shop, but that is the least of the benefits this place provides. For one, they have a great menu of brunch specialties including a wonderful egg+cheese on croissant sandwich in addition to avocado toast and a best-in-class BLT. There also is a literal tree in the middle of seating space, which does take from the conveniency of seating - as with the oddly sized tables and chairs - but adds to the overall ambiance, along with the provided I-spy books. Maybe their most important contribution is the fact they have their own roastery, sold at even the likes of drip, but which places it just slightly further into gentrification than drip.

The first step outside of my regular rotation takes us to Bushwick Bakery. While we only stopped in for about 30 seconds to find out that they don’t have a bulletin board upon which to pin a flier, they seemed to have good pastries on offer and they also have a welcoming seating space both inside and outside. I will definitely return to check out just how good those pastries are as well as the quality of coffee, but the casual-local vibes put it firmly in the camp of this place has been here for years.

Next on the list is Brooklyn Kava. This one, I have to admit, I didn’t even go inside; I saw that they had a street order window so I scoped out the possibility of placing a flier there, but it did seem like a small space inside - hence the window. I can’t testify for their menu offering, but their indoor accommodations seemed minimal. At least they weren’t catering to the trend of offering free space for your laptop job, just getting straight to the point, but you could say the same about the Bushwick drip.

The next stop was Lazy Susy, which gets extra points for actually having a bulletin board for Sarah to post a flier on. It also gets credit for having ample space for people to pull up and get some remote work done. But part and parcel to that last point demotes it a bit as it relates to our scale; it also happened to be attached to (and had a separate entrance from) a newly constructed luxury apartment building. This was the first coffee shop we visited which had very clear ties to gentrification.

The next stop on our trip was one of my favorite new discoveries, Molasses Books. Very unassuming from the outside, that only adds to its charm. Once you get in, you are welcomed by bookshelves, and neatly tucked tables of people discretely enjoying and brew and/or a book. A step or two more (its a small space) takes you up to the “bar” where you (presumably) can order a coffee or pastry, hoping you can find a space to sit and enjoy whatever you ordered as well as your favorite book. You may feel confined in here but to put it more favorable you will fell cozy, and judging by the state of the bookshelves, this is more of an institution than a corporate takeover.

I was skeptical about the next one as we pulled up, but not only did Dweebs have a bulletin board for us to promote the market, it also smelled amazing inside. That smell was due to the fact that while small, they have a full menu including a full bagel menu, breakfast sandwiches and burritos, and even an avocado toast if you really need to get your gentrification on. While they may provide services for gentrifiers, though, the space was clearly well aged and off the beaten path enough to spare my wrath as deeming it only a product of gentrification. I definitely need to go back to try their breakfast burrito.

We briefly stopped by the Black Seed Bagels Bushwick location but I won’t even score them. Black Seed definitely provides great bagels and bagel sandwiches but they don’t have a bulletin board and their prime export is bagels rather than coffee, anyway.

After our brief stop at Black Seed, our next stop was probably the most hyped coffee shop in Bushwick, La Cabra. Sporting locations elsewhere in New York in SoHo and the East Village, as well as 2 in Bangkok, 1 in Oman, in addition to 5 in its home country, Denmark, this one has a lot of hype to live up to. Known for its Cardamom buns, true to its Scandinavian roots, I must report that we didn’t try any of its offers, though they did look enticing. The space was very inviting and expansive, including a back area which offered personal laptop spaces, and a hallway through the middle which acted as a tasteful and subtle sort of showroom for them to promote proprietary wares such as handcrafted mugs, coffee grinders, and their own roast of coffee. (On this note, as you come out of this hallway, you are met with a full-window view of their roastery). All in all, this seems to be a very nice coffee shop, with ample space and probably very good coffee and pastries, but it all felt very out of place in Bushwick.

As we started to make our way back to neighborhoods I know, we found Nook, a coffee shop I have walked by or into a handful of times. At first, I am offput by how crowded it is, which may be a good or bad sign. Responding to this at first, we retreated up the street to KCBC brewery to enjoy a beer as a reward for all the walking we had done to this point, and were surprised by an Italian-style sandwich pop-up they were hosting, which we enjoyed. After refueling, we ventured back down the street and took another crack at Nook, and found that not only did they have a bulletin board, we could understand why it was such a popular hangout. Adjacent to the main seating area are multiple lounges, at least one of which requires you to take off your shoes; they also have a generous kitchen including a full bagel menu and a couple of sandwich options for lunch, including of course, avocado toast. As we left, I noticed one of the kitchy-est, if not most useful features of the place, live subway updates for the departures of all of the nearby lines.

That marks the end of the strictly Bushwick coffee shops we visited, but we did stop by a few in the weird space between Bushwick and Williamsburg aka the Win Son Autonomous Zone, starting with SEY. Our experience inside SEY was short lived and they get demerits for not having a space to post up fliers, but I have been there once before to share a coffee with a friend. While, as an apparently very popular space, they could do for some more seating space. Still, it is a very lovely place. When you get a coffee to stay they deliver it on a tray accompanies by a (sparkling) water. I never would have expected a place so gentrified to find home in such a location (next to a dive bar named after a simplistic way of being buried).

Just down the block from SEY, literally within sight, is Swallow Cafe, demarcated by a giant bird head painted across the facade. Even though you have to take a few steps up from street level, you instantly feel much more at home here than you do at SEY. What they lack in a food menu they make up for in drinks, including a full slate of coffee and tea options, not to mention ample space to post up and chill.

Last, but not least, we stopped at Dun-Well Doughnuts. A donut shop, first and foremost, you would be excused if you couldn’t tell the whole operation is vegan. The coffee takes a back seat because the doughnuts are phenomenal. We had no idea they were vegan until after multiple stops we noticed the signage. The coffee is solid, though, and more than once has provided as a helpful go-to in my newfound neighborhood when my cold brew is out and I need a fix.

I have heard countless times that Bushwick is the new frontier of gentrification, Even as an active participant in it, at first I couldn’t see it. Maybe I was sheltered from it a bit by not being off the L, but the writing is on the wall. And I’m just as guilty a party in it as anyone; as much as I want to go back to Molasses Books I also want to go back to La Cabra. Maybe that’s what defines Bushwick more than anything. It is the frontier between heritage and gentrification. But if this rundown means anything, it is already skewing more towards the latter than the former.