DISH OF THE WEEK: East Village Special at EVERYMAN ESPRESSO

Every week, I document another dish that impressed and satiated me during my food adventures around New York City

Coffee cocktails are a thing nowadays. And I don’t mean an alcoholic beverage with coffee in it. I’m talking about using coffee as if it was a base spirit and mix, stir, or shake it up with all sorts of other ingredients. You thought cappucinos were ingenious, these are even more so.

The first time I encountered anything like this was at a very cool coffee shop in Nashville, Tennessee called Crema. They were adding flavors like curry, cardamom, and cinnamon to their coffee. I’ll never forget the unique and tasty drinks I tried there.

What’s happening at Everyman Espresso and other great coffee shops around New York is on an even higher level. When I ordered my East Village Special (just one of about five specialty coffee drinks), the barista played bartender and pulled out bitters, a shaker, and went to town.

The ingredients don’t immediately scream “coffee drink”, but the blend of espresso, lemon, tiki bitters, soda, and orange cream citrate was intriguing enough to give it a try. And I was super impressed by how balanced and layered it ended up being. The bitter coffee notes were muted by the gentle sweetness of the orange cream citrate, which also provided a creamy texture. It’d be easy to compare this to an orange creamsicle, but it’s much more complex than that, especially with the spicy hints from the Tiki bitters and the effervescence from the soda.

If this is a new trend, it’s one I’m quite excited about. As delicious as the roasty, chocolaty flavors of coffee can be on their own (or with a dash of milk), the morning drink can get monotonous. Coffee cocktails will reinvigorate your morning, even if the only affects are the usual caffeine buzz.