On an unassuming corner in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carrol Gardens, at the intersection of Carroll and Court Streets, used to be home toย a beloved red sauce joint called Casa Rosa. It opened in 1979 and ran a steady business as a local favorite until 2013, when its owners closed down shop for good. But Casa Rosa was never replacedโin fact, the storefront remained vacant for years. That is, until Tom Cummings saw it had come on the market.
โPeople have, for a while now, been peeking in through the boards and construction to see what’s coming,โ Cummings says. Now itโs no secretโEast One Coffee Roasters has arrived. โWe’ve been soft open for just a few days,โ he adds. โAnd the neighborhood seems to be excited.โ
Cummings and his longtime partner, Morten Tjelum, envisioned East One as a space of intersection for exceptional coffee and approachable foodโtheyโre open in the morning to supply patrons with a caffeine fix all the way through dinner service.
โOlder women have come in this week,โ Cummings says. โAnd they are like my momโthey tell me about the neighborhood, and we can chat for hours about food and coffee.โ East One isnโt Cummingsโ first coffee rodeo, however. โI was living in Denmark and the coffee scene wasn’t very goodโaround 1996,โ he says. He spent that time owning an American restaurant in Central Copenhagen before selling it to work for IKEA, where he stayed for 15 years.
โBut I couldn’t shake the coffee thoughts I was having,โ Cummings says. โSo I decided to do the independent thing and we opened New Row Coffee. You know, itโs quite simple, I’ve been in food all my lifeโfrom watching my family cook when I was young, to having my own places all over. But this was when I became truly introspective and thoughtful, and coffee just felt like my life was taking me towards it.โ
It was also taking him toward New York, where heโd be inspired by Ninth Street Espresso before opening Free State Coffee, also alongside Tjelum. Here they fiddled with batch brews and deepened a passion for their product. โCoffee is all about bringing multifaceted people that can do great things,โ Cummings says. โAnd so we brought that to New York.โ
Waiting for them was James Stahon, East Oneโs head of coffee (the three met through Sprudge Jobs), who now roasts on-site in a gorgeous glassed-in area with a Diedrich IR-12.
โI tasked James to find blends that were acceptable to the mass palate of New York,โ Cummings says. โBut isn’t a typical city roast so often found in this town. We wanted to stretch that palateโand that’s the longer term vision for us.โ East One currently serves an everyday coffee for local New Yorkers, but will soon buy seasonally from individual lots and offer those coffees as lighter-roasted options.
โWe currently work with Crop to Cup, who let me work before we had our own space,โ Stahon says. โWe source three coffees from themโSonar, a blend from Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Tanzania; Guji, which is an Ethiopian Sidamo; and then Prism which is the filter blend, [and] also Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Tanzania.โ
He explains that the process of finding a flexible coffee, for use as both drip and espresso offerings, was lengthy. โI started the sourcing process not at the best timeโit was in the off-season so I couldn’t find fresh arrivals,โ Stahon says. โWe did so many cuppings looking for the perfect components. I didn’t want that fermenty tasteโwe wanted a quieter taste.โ Now he feels as though he has it.
Next on Stahonโs agenda is finding single-origin coffees to โexercise the muscles of taste,โ he says. โWe want to challenge ourselves and our clients but to remain approachable. And that means slightly stepping outside of what you think coffee could be.โ
Selina Ullrich, East Oneโs coffee and operations manager, echoes Stahon. โThis neighborhood is also ready to be challenged. You can actually make progress with a good explanation,โ she says, adding that thereโs a certain pleasure in watching customers move from “this won’t stress you out coffee” to more complex cups.
In appreciation of the role water plays in the coffee process, East One will support international charities focused on clean water initiatives. One of the first examples is Three Avocados, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering access to clean water in coffee-growing regions.
For those in the area, this may just be your new favorite neighborhood cafe. But with a strong local base, it wonโt be long before the East Oneย corner is a destination worth traveling to.
Daniel Schefflerย is a Sprudge staff writer at large. His work has appeared inย Tย Magazine,ย Travel And Leisure,ย Monocle,ย Playboy,ย New York Magazine,ย The New York Times, andย Butt. Read more Daniel Scheffler on Sprudge.
Photos courtesy of Ethan Covey