Joe Coffee Company (New Rochelle)
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Luxury apartment building and an across-the-street Planet Fitness...could the only Joe Coffee outside of New York have snagged a better location? You walk in to see a sushi-roller island and green velvet chairs, joined by mirroring, custom cut to fit into ink black arched and curved rectangular recessed walls. As I began to take in the other boutique elements, the blue-tile pillar in the center rightfully caught my eye. However, it wasn’t that it was a standout feature. Rather, I could have sworn that I’d seen the exact same design somewhere else...right: Bluestone Lane - Hudson Yards. It’s flashy in theory, but this commonplace color pop doesn’t really land. One other thing: I wish the lighting was better. Double-sided pendant sconces and floating LED lights accents are present, yet in summary it amounts to a unaccomplished stylistic dimness. While the COFFEE neon on the reverse side of the pillar (it was unlit when I went in) could very well electrify, and its top lighting acts like some sort of celestial connection, the lack of intentional light ultimately frustrates. What appears to be non-geometric cuts of tissue paper, arranged and then affixed to canvas, are framed and mounted just above the wall paneling. In your efforts to find the coffee, you probably didn’t notice this art. I get it. During the entry moment, I was directionally unsound until the woman ran up from the cushioned bench in the curved rectangle recession—where she’d been sitting when I walked in—arriving quickly and with a lost look. The highlight for me was the contemporary black couch, some mishmash of a piano with no white keys or smushed together charcoal lady fingers. I didn’t sit on it, but—while simple conceptually—the key it plucked visually, as an intriguingly accent and statement onto itself, offered what I assumed the space was going for: cool comfort.
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Drink: Lavender Earl Grey Iced Latte
This drink, while meeting the floral expectation, is oddly refreshing. It might be the ice, but I would venture it has to do with the something beyond the cold. There are a lot of different flavors. It’s tagged as the “perfect spring sip.” I’d dispute this claim, finding it more to be a perplexing fall sip. But, I think that this conclusion will inevitably come down to how you’ve experienced the seasons. If you want one of this latte’s flavors, I’d recommend going just lavender or just Earl Grey. Both together offers something that’s unharmonious and overwhelming to the tongue. I have a few suggested alterations. The first is to make it dairy. The oat—while great in its own right—can’t support all that flavor. The second suggestion is to give the drink a Earl Grey cold foam. Essentially, I’m suggesting a standard iced lavender latte with Earl Grey cold foam. They could then add lavender flower buds on top of the cold foam. They would also gain the volume back for two shots of espresso (this drink, small or large, only comes with one shot). While I did bask in the skinny straw, the fact of the matter is that the drink just doesn’t level with the price.