Blue Bottle Coffee
Blue Bottle brews its iced espresso Kyoto-style, cold water moving slowly through the grounds in place of pressure.4 This is the Bryant Park door, on the ground floor of the WeWork at 54 West 40th Street.1
Why go
The building held an Episcopal church, then a Republican social club, then a drug rehab center.1 Aaron Nice, who ran store development for Blue Bottle, told Liz Clayton at Sprudge that the fit-out was a collaboration between our design team [DCR, which has notably worked on various Momofuku restos] and WeWork's design team, so it would have a seamless look.
1 The tile on the floor and the light fixtures overhead are WeWork's choices.1
James Freeman sold roasted beans off one cart at the Old Oakland Farmers Market before any of this.5 The company holds eighteen permitted addresses in this city, sixteen of them in Manhattan.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a Signature Iced drink. The company builds them on Hayes Valley Espresso and brews them cold so they hold their shape against the ice.4
- Order: the drip if you want it hot. Clayton found the hot coffee coming off a drip bar and a La Marzocco Strada EP.1
- Avoid: arriving with a laptop and an afternoon. Clayton counted six stools, and called that more than the average New York Blue Bottle.1
What locals & experts say
- Bryan Kim, The Infatuation NYC (21 January 2022):
This much-hyped chain from the Bay Area is all about the quality of their coffee, so seek them out when high-maintenance caffeine is the only thing that'll brighten up your Midtown day.
2 - The limit: two pieces name this address and neither of them is a review of it. For a door this ordinary, that is all the world holds.
Good to know
- Where: 54 West 40th Street, across from Bryant Park.1
- The other Midtown door: at the bottom of Rockefeller Center, which Kim names in the same guide.2
Verdict
listed — Take it away. This is a convenience stop with good coffee in it, and I would not cross Midtown for it.