![]() ![]() Devoción has a deep relationship with the farmers of their home country and change their roasting techniques to suit the characteristics of the land that it came from.Ĭafe Vita East Williamsburg Caffe Vita: Roaster RoundupsĬaffe Vita sits snugly on the Lower East Side, nestled between skate shops, burger stands and fashion labels. At the end of February, we roundup the Columbian-only coffees, of Devoción, by far the most beautiful cafe in New York City. Then, as a contrast, in two weeks we have SEY coffee, from Bushwick, who have brought the passion of the 3rd Wave to Brooklyn, roasting prized single origins with a light touch to give their customers a light, clean experience. ![]() The first three roasters we’ve put under our microscopes couldn’t be more different, so we’ll be presenting them as a kind of three-part review, in order to compare and contrast their styles.įirst, we have Caffe Vita, who approach their coffees almost like chefs, balancing blends and roasting single origins to make warm approachable coffees. To start, we’ve been checking out all the shops that are roasting locally, around us, in New York, in order to see their process and talk to them about their styles, their methods, and where they want to take coffee next. Each feature will comprehensively review the coffee on offer from one roaster that season. Last January, Maclise took back the original location, but this turn of events reunites the Sunset Hill Fiore with the other three.To ring in the New Year, we’ve decided to add a new feature to coffee. He’s also excited to have Caffe Fiore back, and says the branding there will be more separate from Vita than it has been since the merge. “I want to create a community around each shop.” In the long term, it seems likely a guy with Maclise’s penchant for aesthetics will put his own stamp on the look and feel of the cafes as well. “I want Vita to be known as having the type of customer service that makes people’s day,” he says. ![]() When I did manage to profile him in 2016, he said selling the business was always a consideration, if the benefits of a sale outweighed his enjoyment in running the business that began as a single shop in Queen Anne in 1995, frequented in those days by grunge musicians.Īs Maclise takes over all things Vita, he’s not planning enormous changes, but wants to spend his time investing in its culture. McConnell’s not one to talk to the press, and didn't respond to my query about the sale. With the recent transaction, he bought out Vita owner Mike McConnell, a Seattle figure who is somehow both enigmatic and omnipresent, between founding pizzeria Via Tribunali and backing a range of great local restaurants, like Li’l Woody’s, Hitchcock, and the Wandering Goose, plus more pizza at Big Mario’s and Pizzeria 22. In 2016, Fiore joined forces with Vita in what Maclise terms a merger. In 2002, he bought Sunset Hill’s Caffe Fiore, growing an affable little community hub into four locations, all serving organic beans. Maclise was a barista and manager at Uptown Espresso during the 1990s, the era that established our city’s coffee bona fides. But before that, as he puts it, “I was deep in coffee.” After spending the past 12 years opening some of the town’s most striking restaurants with business partner James Weimann, “I get to go do coffee while I’m still doing restaurants.” Maclise already had a stake in Vita, but he’s likely also a familiar name for anyone who has dined in (or simply ogled the decor at) places like Bastille, Poquitos, Stoneburner, and Rhein Haus.
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