Why I’m Doing This (April 14, 2025)

It all started out as a lark: I simply thought it’d be fun to travel all over New York City, visit as many cafes as I could, and rank each cafe’s latte, my favorite drink.

I couldn’t really do this type of thing when I first moved to NYC in March of 2020 – great timing Neil, I know  –  and I’m not sure exactly when I decided to really make a full go at it. But I started posting my first rankings in 2021, and I’ve been at it ever since. 

It’s a serious hobby now, and one I’ve become more and more committed to over the past couple of years, compared to when I started. It’s a project that I love  – it gets me out of bed in the morning!

Until April of 2025, my coffee rankings appeared on a single page of my professional website, and that page was getting all the traffic. In that sense, my professional website was already a coffee website! I decided that the rankings deserved their own website, and that I wanted to create a more well-rounded offering that could serve as a resource for people living in NYC, or visiting NYC, who wanted to explore the coffee scene here. 

One of the great things about this project is that it has resulted in new experiences and opportunities for me. For instance, I’ve led group coffee tours in the city; they were so much fun, if a little nerve racking at first! Now I offer private tours, too. I’ve also taken espresso workshops, do a lot of reading, and – importantly – practice making great drinks at home with my espresso machine. Hey, if I’m going to judge lattes, I should judge myself as well.

But best of all: Occasionally people contact me to ask more about the rankings, what the judging criteria are, and to thank me for helping them find great cafes in the city. That’s really rewarding – to find out that people actually benefit from the site, since that’s its purpose. For instance, a couple recently visiting NYC told me that they used my rankings to guide them on their trip, and they even bookmarked the rankings page for their next visit to the Big Apple. That felt pretty good. Now there is a whole new website for people to bookmark!

As long as coffee seekers find this site useful, I will keep traversing the city to find that fantastic latte for you. There are many more cafes to visit – and I want to visit all of them – so come back often to see the latest rankings, blog posts, and more.