Super Nice (UES)
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I’ve known about Super Nice for a few years now; it all goes back to 2021 when I got their pastries delivered to my best friend for her birthday during quarantine. She had a roommate that was vegan and, well, this place fit the bill. I’d ordered from their 108th St location, given that the birthday girl lives off Malcom X Blvd. However, I can still recount the joy at discovering that this cafe has a second location in East Harlem. Sadly, as I continued my trek up Lex, I would have absolutely missed this spot if I wasn’t looking for it. It might only be just beyond the MI BARRIO MEAT MARKET; and there is a black, plastic A-frame and matching awning. Yet, the sign’s exhausted chalk and the street-facing words COFFEE-ESPRESSO-BAKERY on the awning’s edge almost push it more into neighborhood obscurity. I questioned whether it was even open, with windows so magnificently reflective that I couldn’t see beyond them to the menu listing, a layering of Scotch tape and scrap paper (on what appeared to be a piece of cardboard), pushed right up to it. Getting eyes on the donuts—the goods—before needing to know what you want is an impossibility. How to (or if I) could order further confused the situation. One door had a laminated “Window Service” sign, but someone walked through it at my approach. Could I? Since I couldn’t see anything, and no one was at the window, I thought that maybe I could go enter and that this sign was a suggestion.
“I’ll be right with you,” the guy behind the bug screen acknowledged.
So, I waited.
When another woman walked up, there was a different person behind the screen now ready to take her order. Everything was quickly remedied, I hopped in and placed my order while she apologized. No slight or malice in the entirety of it all. In the end, okay the experience wasn’t super nice, but it definitely wasn’t bad to any degree. If you want a largely neutral, take-away coffee encounter, look for the pig.
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Drink: Drip Coffee
By far the best this cup of coffee was the best I’d had all day. They were selling bags of whole bean Paper Plane Coffee Co. Santuario Single Origin Specialty Coffee and TINTO, so I assume that’s what they were brewing. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the larger bags on the shelf above the espresso machine. They also had some Crown Beverage’s Emperor’s Finest Decaf, so there could very well be variation. But, with the natural sweetness, accompanied by an intentional fruit angling, and something like a graham cracker undertone, my money is on Paper Plane Coffee Co. all the way. Regardless, it’s good. Funny, I wrote this line and thought, have I heard this somewhere? Sure enough, the last line of a coffee mention in one of their update emails: “It’ll be great, regardless.” I can confirm.
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Drink: Loganberry Donut
I had asked for a recommendation because I just couldn’t decide. Mango chili, loganberry, blood orange, maple pecan !!! [how it was written], and every cake donut (honey cornbread, birthday cake, lemon poppy) spoke to me. She pointed me at first to the passion fruit, then advocated for the popularity of the plain glazed. The blueberry cake (not on the menu) was also apparently a favorite. But, I couldn’t resist my own intrigue. What is loganberry? I didn’t need to ask: “blackberry and raspberry purée.” A yeast donut, perhaps, but it didn’t seem it. It was soft yet hefty. Unfortunately, the glaze does—for lack of better phrasing—absorb. She had put a napkin in with the donut and, by the time I’d gotten a chance to eat it, half of the topping was in the napkin. While the donut was still decent, its intriguing flavor aspect was too short lived for my taste. I’m big on balance—eggs-to-potato ratios, just enough cream cheese to thinly layer the bagel, cheese as an additive to the dippers—and I’d have preferred that the loganberry had more prominence to balance things out. I’ll just have to venture into cake donut territory when I visit the west side location...