(Via SPRUDGE.COM) Newsflash: There is good coffee in New York City on the Upper West Side! The UWS is a largely untapped resource for specialty coffee, perhaps due to the frankly odd way of life that exists there – $6500 a month apartments directly next door to $500 rent controls! doormen that make more during Christmas than you do all year! that remarkable park, right there within walking distance, close enough to call your back yard! - but more likely on account of ludicrously high rents. Opening a new cafe there is risky, but the folks at Irving Farm are betting big by setting up a flagship space at 264 W 79th, between Broadway and Amsterdam, in the heart of the UWS. Here’s some more from the Irving Farm blog:

We’re completely reconstructing a 1500 square-foot space on the ground floor of a historic brownstone on West 79th Street in Manhattan. From the building materials and brewing equipment, to the coffee menu and food offerings, we’re designing a space that will be unlike anything we’ve built before, and a cafe experience we hope will be unlike anything you’ve ever had before!

We’re still several weeks away from opening the doors, but we can’t help our excitement as all the new components begin to fit into place. On the counter, we’ll have a La Marzocco Strada and a beatifully hand-crafted bar for our Kalita pour-over gear—all of this to present our dynamic menu of blended and single-origin coffees that Dan Streetman (Ed. note: that’s him riding the Wooly Mammoth), our Coffee Director, has been working hard to source. In addition to the coffee, our menu will feature craft beers, a small list of wines and local meats and cheeses. And, to take it all in, we’ll have a back lounge with a skylight and a 10-foot community dining table made of reclaimed wood.

Irving Farm’s new cafe is designed by the architecture firm LEVENBETTS (we understand they prefer the full capitalization), whose website is here – we dare you not to lose an hour there.

Let’s put this is New York context, shall we? To reach the new Irving Farm cafe, one takes the oft-ignored 1 train, which, if you haven’t been on it in a while, is actually quite nice – there’s usually the full dot-tracking stop service in each car, and the tone of your train will be its own whole thing, a mix of Columbia students, incognito (or accidental) billionaires, and collected sociological samples from that odd para-world that exists along the Northern finger of Manhattan Island serviced by the 1, all the way to that amazing castle-thing in Fort Tryon Park. Take the 1 and get off on the 79th Street stop – Irving Farm UWS is a proverbial hop, skip, and jump away.

Irving Farm joins Joe NYC’s space on W. 84th (Ecco) and the Momofuku Milk Bar space on Columbus and W. 84th (Stumptown) as outposts for high-end non-Starbucks coffee options on that side of Central Park. It is also worth noting that Irving Farm’s new space will be within mere blocks (and a $19 suggested donation) from the T-Rex fossil on permanent exhibition at the American Natural History Museum. We’re working on an approbative thesis now: “Good Coffee and Dinosaurs: Towards A New Duality”.

More, we say! We want more good roasters represented above and around Central Park, and we want it now! Don’t you realize these neighborhoods are chockablock with curious billionaires, surreal vistas, and all manner of cool / weird stuff to do? Coffee is such a lovely way to enjoy and explore New York, and we don’t just mean the New York below 34th Street. This very promising development from Irving Farm gives us one more excellent excuse to go see the Aptosaurus, the wooly mammoth, and the Hayden Planetarium….summer softball in the park, anyone?

http://sprudge.com/betting-the-irving-farm-ny-roaster-bullish-on-the-uws.html

We’re building a new cafe, and we think you’ll love it! 

Earlier this year, we mentioned that we’re working on a new project. We’re completely reconstructing a 1500 square-foot space on the ground floor of a historic brownstone at 224 West 79th Street in Manhattan. From the building materials and brewing equipment, to the coffee menu and food offerings, we’re designing a space that will be unlike anything we’ve built before, and a cafe experience we hope will be unlike anything you’ve ever had before!

We’re still several weeks away from opening the doors, but we can’t help our excitement as all the new components begin to fit into place. On the counter, we’ll have a La Marzocco Strada and a beatifully hand-crafted bar for our Kalita pour-over gear—all of this to present our dynamic menu of blended and single-origin coffees that Dan Streetman, our Coffee Director, has been working hard to source. In addition to the coffee, our menu will feature craft beers, a small list of wines and local meats and cheeses. And, to take it all in, we’ll have a back lounge with a skylight and a 10-foot community dining table made of reclaimed wood.

There’s so much more to come, as we prepare to open. We’ll bring you more updates soon! For now, we hope you enjoy the rendering above, courtesy of our friends at LEVENBETTS, who have designed the space.

This past Friday and Saturday Irving Farm got the chance to connect and reconnect with some of our favorite farmers, chefs, and agronomists at the Just Food Conference in Manhattan.

1,000 members of the local food movement, including our friends from the Stone Barns Center, gathered to learn more about each other’s interests and initiatives… and, of course, to drink a lot of coffee! Tickets for the event sold out, and the morning crowds kept Jake Leonti (Director of Wholesale) and Miguel Rios (barista at 56 Seventh Ave) busy serving coffee faster than they could brew it.

Special shout out to Organic Valley; pairing their great milk from NY dairy farms with our coffee made a great combination! We’re happy to have had the opportunity to be a sponsor and to have had Dan Streetman (Director of Coffee) participate as a workshop panelist.

Third Place for Irving Farm in the Brewer’s Cup at the Northeast Regional Barista Competition! Go Tamara!

Last weekend, Irving Farm was involved with this year’s Northeast Regional Barista Competition.  Every year it is a gathering of the best baristas from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Maryland.  At the event there are two competitions.  The Barista Competition, and the Brewer’s Cup.  This year from Irving Farm our Director of Education Tamara Vigil competed in both competitions and took Third Place in the Brewer’s Cup! 

Last week I was in El Salvador visiting with our partners at JASAL.  In case you don’t know JASAL produces the Cerro Las Ranas, and Everest Coffees we have had the past 2 years.  This family run business is in its third generation, and this year marks the first year that Jose Antonio Jr, and Andres are taking the reigns of operations.  Jose Antonio Sr, is still around and guiding everything but the brothers in their late 20’s-and early 30’s have brought a new energy to the operations.

It is especially rewarding for me to see the new generation taking hold, with the same commitment to quality, but with an eye for innovation.  We spent most of the week discussing various experiments, and cupping new/different coffees from the farm.  Andres explained to us they were looking at every step in the process to see where they could make improvements.

Last year when I was there, I cupped a coffee from their farm called Guadalupe.  The coffee was delicious, and afterward we visited and it is one of the most beautiful farms I have been on.  This year I am excited because we cupped the coffee again, and it is even better.  Not to mention that we will be bringing this coffee into the US for the first time.

I am also looking at bringing in 1-2 micro-lots from JASAL from the new experiments that they have done this year, so stay tuned!

Central American coffee harvest season is upon us, and with that comes the beginning of my origin travels for this year.  I traveled to Guatemala and Costa Rica at the beginning of the month, and what an exciting trip it was!  We visited some amazing farms, and met really incredible people.  I’m still working out the details of which coffees we will be purchasing, and when they arrive but stay tuned for more details.  In the meantime here are a few photos from my trip.

This is the city of Antigua in Guatemala, the colonial capitol of Guatemala.  In the background is one of the three volcanoes in the region.  Below are ripe coffee cherries in Costa Rica.