east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

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 replacedโ€”in fact, the storefront remained vacant for years. That is, until Tom Cummings saw it had come on the market.

โ€œPeople have, for a while now, been peeking in through the boards and construction to see what’s coming,โ€ Cummings says. Now itโ€™s no secretโ€”East One Coffee Roasters has arrived. โ€œWe’ve been soft open for just a few days,โ€ he adds. โ€œAnd the neighborhood seems to be excited.โ€

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

Cummings and his longtime partner, Morten Tjelum, envisioned East One as a space of intersection for exceptional coffee and approachable foodโ€”theyโ€™re open in the morning to supply patrons with a caffeine fix all the way through dinner service.

โ€œOlder women have come in this week,โ€ Cummings says. โ€œAnd they are like my momโ€”they tell me about the neighborhood, and we can chat for hours about food and coffee.โ€ East One isnโ€™t Cummingsโ€™ first coffee rodeo, however. โ€œI was living in Denmark and the coffee scene wasn’t very goodโ€”around 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.

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge
east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

โ€œBut I couldn’t shake the coffee thoughts I was having,โ€ Cummings says. โ€œSo I decided to do the independent thing and we opened New Row Coffee. You know, itโ€™s quite simple, I’ve been in food all my lifeโ€”from 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€

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It was also taking him toward New York, where heโ€™d 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. โ€œCoffee is all about bringing multifaceted people that can do great things,โ€ Cummings says. โ€œAnd so we brought that to New York.โ€

Waiting for them was James Stahon, East Oneโ€™s 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.

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

โ€œI tasked James to find blends that were acceptable to the mass palate of New York,โ€ Cummings says. โ€œBut isn’t a typical city roast so often found in this town. We wanted to stretch that palateโ€”and 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.

โ€œWe currently work with Crop to Cup, who let me work before we had our own space,โ€ Stahon says. โ€œWe source three coffees from themโ€”Sonar, 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€

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

He explains that the process of finding a flexible coffee, for use as both drip and espresso offerings, was lengthy. โ€œI started the sourcing process not at the best timeโ€”it was in the off-season so I couldn’t find fresh arrivals,โ€ Stahon says. โ€œWe did so many cuppings looking for the perfect components. I didn’t want that fermenty tasteโ€”we wanted a quieter taste.โ€ Now he feels as though he has it.

Next on Stahonโ€™s agenda is finding single-origin coffees to โ€œexercise the muscles of taste,โ€ he says. โ€œWe 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€

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

Selina Ullrich, East Oneโ€™s coffee and operations manager, echoes Stahon. โ€œThis neighborhood is also ready to be challenged. You can actually make progress with a good explanation,โ€ she says, adding that thereโ€™s 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.

east one coffee roasters brooklyn new york cafe sprudge

For those in the area, this may just be your new favorite neighborhood cafe. But with a strong local base, it wonโ€™t be long before the East Oneย corner is a destination worth traveling to.

East One Coffee Roasters is located at 384 Court Street, Brooklyn. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook,ย Twitter, and Instagram.

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

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