Sprudge’s 2025 guide to great cafes across New York City continues! Our first feature in the series featured cafe favorites across Lower Manhattan, and today highlighting bustling North Brooklyn—a veritable hotbed of hot cafes! For the purposes of this guide, we’re defining “North Brooklyn” as north of Atlantic Avenue, with more Brooklyn exploration to come in future guides.

Cafe Grumpy

Greenpoint

In life, you want some things to change, and you want others to stay the same. Greenpoint’s Cafe Grumpy, the shop where this as-seen-on-TV NYC roaster started out, looks much the same as it has for the last decade-and-change: festively orange, airy, casual, someplace you’d absolutely bring a first date or loll a Sunday afternoon away. Though the company once roasted right there among the computer crowd in the back, those operations moved a few doors down as the company grew, again freeing up the cafe’s second room for quiet laptopping and perusing the huge shelf of free books. A small selection of pastries is available including gluten-free options, as well as grab-and-go cold brew drinks. The cafe has a restroom, and there are a couple of benches outside as well.

Dayglow

Bushwick

Dayglow, an ultramodern coffee boutique brand operating in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, brought its Kubrickian charm to this odd part of East Williamsburg in 2023 in a spot previously occupied by an automotive welding company, then by Supercrown Roasters, and then Partners Coffee before Dayglow. Leaning into the company’s promise of “unique experiences”, the multi-roaster cafe features scads of expensive imports (The Barn, Fritz Coffee, Kawa, Coffee Collective, etc.) on the shelves, hip brewing toys (ModBar setup, Tone brewers) and a very long menu of signature coffee drinks with outré ingredients such as distilled coffee, blue algae, and clarified matcha. Just want a coffee? There’s a hand-brew menu of around ten different offerings from roasters around the world (and a couple of Dayglow’s own) as well as a couple of espresso directions to go in and a pastry case by the understandably popular Native Bread.

In what used to be “just” a coffee roasting space in the back, Dayglow has gone one step further by adding a distillery. Enter Niteglow, the alter-ego alcohol operation of this joint, crafting craft beers you’re able to order draft-poured in a variety of methods. There are tables here and indeed a few people appear to be mashing keyboards, but this experiential journey is no typical “coffice”, nor is it likely to be one you’ll have anywhere else! Has outdoor seating, and a bathroom.

La Cabra Roastery

Bushwick

This deluxe iteration of the Danish brand that now boasts three outlets in NYC is more high design than hygge. A multi-storefront span on an upcycled industrial Bushwick block, the home of La Cabra‘s North American roasting is ostensibly a cafe, but feels more like a very fancy, very serious place to get coffee. The space is uniquely divided into sections, which are broken up by what the La Cabra website describes as its “solid oak retail structure”—a thing that creates a corridor-like setup including, not even kidding here, individual library-style seating carrels. Roasting operations are on view in back, and there’s a sort of regular-cafe space near the coffee bar and pastry counter, where the warm service (despite labcoat-esque staff uniforms) thaws out the unusually austere decor. The coffees are top shelf, but the pastries even more so—I had a gooey, just wild “seasonal” cashew cookie that tasted like they’d invented a candy bar. There’s some more casual seating out front, and don’t miss the immaculate and fully ADA-compliant lavatories.

 

Larry’s Cà Phê

East Williamsburg

Neighbors to Larry’s Ca Phe are lucky ones. This New-York-small, tiny-wedge-of-cheese-shaped spot on Woodpoint Avenue (once known as Tar Pit cafe) is a homey, just-right local that stands out with a menu of Asian-influenced drinks and treats.

With a backbone of coffee from house co-brand Bolting Cheetah coffee offered in traditional espresso/milk configurations, you’ll also want to check out the Vietnamese Cà Phê menu, starring housemade Vietnamese cold brew with egg custards or salted foam, or the pandan hot chocolate with torched marshmallow. While staple pastry offerings are ubiquitous fare from Colson, a couple of housemade treats, like a honeycomb pandan cake and dark chocolate/matcha hapa cookies, are tempting and delicious. There are really, maybe, 10 seats in here, but they still manage to have a bathroom, a progressive-lit-focused community bookshelf, and a fantastic vibe…and they make their espresso grounds into soap you can buy.

Loveless

Bushwick

You’ll see Loveless on most coffee sophisticates’ lists for local Brooklyn roasters to check out, and this is where their “New York Nordic” roast magic happens. It’s truly Bushwick’s pinkest coffee shop, with a neo-retro style evinced by the vintage pink tiled bar/arched mirrors and soft ’80s energy. The baristas give a definite “we’re serious” vibe, and will expertly make you a pour-over of one of their fine roasts, as well as delightful espresso-based drinks… but you can also chill out and get a bowl of oatmeal, too. Loveless is a sustainability-minded coffee operation, and focuses on efficient resource usage, compostable materials, and roasts its coffee on a Loring to reduce the company’s fuel footprint. There’s some nominal sidewalk seating here, and a bathroom.

Passionfruit

Bedford-Stuyvesant

In what at first sounds like a very unlikely turn of events, Spokane husband and wife couple Taylor and Chloe Siok moved from the Pacific Northwest to open Passionfruit in Bed-Stuy, serving Superlative Coffee from Idaho. But hear me out: he’s an acclaimed pastry chef, she’s head bartender at PDT, and they’re great at coffee. This beautifully appointed cafe boasts a lot of white, a lot of herons on the walls, and a communal table sized just right for meeting someone new. Coffee brought in from DOMA is expertly prepared, and is paired with a small and serious selection of exceptional housemade pastries, emphasizing sweet and sticky poundcakes and fresh-warmed madeleines. It’s a gratuity-included cafe, a business model that’s evidenced in a good cup at any hour and time you visit. Restroom available and there are a few relaxed seats out front along with things on which to attach your dog while you go order.

Sey Coffee

Bushwick

Long the darlings of NYC’s roasting scene, Sey Coffee is holding strong at this Grattan Ave industrial-chic space, serving on-premise Scandinavian-style-light-roasted coffees to the beautiful people of the area. It’s everything you might imagine out of a movie—distressed concrete floors, exposed pipes, and a skylit ceiling just dripping with plants. Seating and tables are a mix of angular wood and more concrete, with a nice little outside bench perch to enjoy—all feeling somehow less brutal owing to the friendly staff and generous natural light. Filter brew is the way to go here, where you can sample one of the esteemed roaster’s many origins. You’ll want to engage the barista, though, as prices of things and names of pastries may be a bit hard to locate.

Three-Legged Cat

East Williamsburg

Ever just get a great feeling right away from a coffee bar? You will at Three-Legged Cat, a 2024 newcomer in the reasonably saturated East Williamsburg coffee, where, apparently, there was room for yet another top-tier coffee bar. The welcoming energy here beams down from owners Leeor Waisbrod and Adelaide Cope, who’ve created a coffee-passionate space without any of that intentional alienation we’re all desperately tired of. The shop has quickly become a scene-supporting hub, with bar takeovers and barista events peppering the day to day. A multi-roaster joint, you’ll see names from near and far like Dak, Obscure Coffee, and Onyx Coffee Lab. Excellent pastries from Native Bread. And don’t wait for that iPad to flip around—Three-Legged Cat is a gratuity-free cafe.

Variety Coffee

Williamsburg

It seems unlikely anyone who’s been to Williamsburg has overlooked Variety Coffee, especially now that the brand has posh cafes everywhere. This, the O.G. location of a now multiborough chain and roaster, is still filled with charm (and people!) Pleasingly, Variety’s aesthetic is more classical and clean, taking advantage of curves and lines whenever possible and avoiding the cliches of the too-oft seen sterile white boxes of Third Wave cafes. They’ve played to the strengths of this narrow shop by offering curved ceilings and rich wood fixtures, making it look a bit like a vintage railway car. Enjoy espresso or coffee drinks from their own-roasted, seasonally changing single origins and blends, along with tempting traditional pastries from Colson. There is some seating out front to see and be seen at, and a restroom for customers inside.

Liz Clayton is the associate editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Liz Clayton on Sprudge.

Photos by Liz Clayton.