Blue Bottle Coffee @ 30 Rock, NYC

As we're supposedly Coffee Aficionados, it was our mission to find some of the best Coffee that NYC had to offer....unfortunately, in my brilliance,

I booked our trip to The Big Apple during the hottest, steamiest time of the year, thus curtailing our adventures to twenty minute spurts of outdoor misery immediately followed by running into air-conditioned interiors, wet and melted like a soppy puddle on the floor.....

So while staying in Midtown, the closest java stop worth mentioning was Blue Bottle Coffee, located in the lower level of Rockefeller Center amongst the other food court like venues.  It's off the beaten path, which gives it's exclusive vibe, but a little different than the other BBC's we've encountered....

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The interior is pretty swank, as you might expect from a business oriented location, but it's offset with the hipster baristas with their denim shirts and Fedoras creating this paradoxical tension between 'too cool for school' with 'power suit megalomaniac'....oh and the horrible tourists thrown in as well....it's fun to watch....it's the age old question: melting pot or tossed salad?

But seeing that now I guess I'm a tourist now, I found it all in good spirits; we walked in and had a pretty good encounter.  we saw this perfect tote back to bring our coffee around when we travel, it's compact and great to hold our travel size water boiler, press and mugs which we need in the hotel room. But coffee was the priority, so we waited behind this guy-clearly frustrated over the process of purchasing his item, I mean anything that could go wrong did.  He was a traveller, wanted to buy all these coffee items and was having trouble throughout- couldn't use his Amex, didn't have all the items in stock, etc... Finally they told him if he gets the 'package deal' all the items he's bought separately would be cheaper, and it's includes the tote bag.  I started to kid with him, saying how ironic it was that we wanted just the tote, while he wanted everything else.  You know what? He said nothing would please him more than giving us the bag to us and we got it free!  

This is a pic of the Baristas, who were a little confused as to what exactly happened, but they went with the flow in a blasé hipster fashion..I'm kidding, they were really nice and were able to crack a smile for the camera!  Anyways, I love it-it's kinda of a cool interaction in a City that has a reputation of being cold and indifferent. And even though it was with a tourist, it included the Baristas and made it very memorable! Anyways, this is the bag:

Loves it!!!

Ratings (Out of Five Stars)

Food:          4

Ambience   4 

Service:      4