La Cabra Bakery
Order the cardamom buns, which Carina Finn calls "second to none." La Cabra roasts its own coffee at a Bushwick roastery and bakes at this Second Avenue door, so the cup and the pastry come out of the same house.
Why go
La Cabra came out of Aarhus, and the thing it brought with it is the cardamom bun. There is a line from the moment they open and it moves. Finn's other instruction is to take home a loaf of the dark, dense bread and slather it with your finest salty butter. This is the East Village bakery door. The company runs two more in New York, on Lafayette Street in SoHo and at the Willoughby Avenue roastery in Bushwick.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a cardamom bun and a coffee, then a loaf to carry out. Finn's line on the case is that
anything you order from the pastry case will be excellent.
1 - Avoid: arriving in the evening. This door shuts before dinner, seven days a week.
What locals & experts say
- Carina Finn, The Infatuation, 5 January 2023:
The speciality here is cardamom buns, and these sticky, airy, delicately-spiced knots of dough are second to none.
1 - The same review, on the queue:
Even on a random weekday with bad weather, there's going to be a line at La Cabra in the East Village starting the moment they open, and it won't really let up.
1
Good to know
- Timing: breakfast onward, seven days, and it closes before dinner.
- Booking: walk in and queue.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Hot new coffee"
Verdict
should-visit — Carina Finn says the coffee and the pastries here sit on the same very high level, which she says is rare. She wrote it up in January 2023, and the line she describes starts the moment they open.