• Best Espresso

  Gorilla Coffee

  97 Fifth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn, 718-230-3244

  It’s as hard to find a consistently great espresso in New York as it is to find a root-beer float in Rome. Deftly pulled and properly short, rich, dense, and not too bitter, and with a decent crema, Gorilla’s comes closest.

• Best Macchiato

  Cipriani La Specialità

  110 East 42nd Street, 212-557-5088

  The perfect expression of steamed milk and espresso, marked with a fine tuft of froth, served in elegant china cups, and sipped standing up by Italian expats in $4,500 shoes.

• Best Latte

  St. Helen Cafe

  150 Wythe Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 718-302-1197

  Smooth and well balanced, it’s made with a lush, syrupy espresso, and the owners, a pair of clothing designers and rabid coffee connoisseurs, execute the signature latte leaf to Pacific Northwest perfection.

• Best Coffee Bar

  Joe

  141 Waverly Place, 212-924-6750

  Good coffee, latte, and Amy Sedaris’s cupcakes, plus disheveled, groggy-eyed celebrities. Is that Philip Seymour Hoffman over there in the Adidas flip-flops?

• Best Old-World Kaffeehaus

  Café Sabarsky

  1048 Fifth Avenue, 212-288-0665

  Rattan newspaper holders (filled with indecipherable Austrian newspapers), plenty of delicious Viennese pastries, and coffee served the old-fashioned way, on a silver tray with a cup of water on the side.

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine