Gorilla Coffee has its roots in Brooklyn and is continuing to evolve along with the city’s cutting edge of coffee trends.
Gorilla (its two Park Slope shops as a unit) constituted the first stop on my summer coffee crawl.
I was delighted that when I walked into the 5th Ave store the first bag of beans I saw on the shelf of recently roasted single origins was La Falda,
Colombian Cup of Excellence winner that I recently had the pleasure of tasting in Medellin, Colombia at Pergamino Cafe.
Gorilla’s 5th Ave shop is filled with lots of black and red gorilla merch and coffees from Sumatra to Guatemala, all whole bean bags with all the farm stats you could ask for and roast dates from within the past two weeks.
Their new Bergen Street shop, right at the teeth of the Bergen St 2/3 stop in the shadow of Barclays, is designed as the perfect pourover haven. Several single origins are nestled in clear class jars, ready to be weighed and measured to be come sublime Chemexes of coffee that is just plain good. The space has everything from a recessed, in counter Pellegrino bottle holder to ample shelving display to Gorilla’s punctuated branding on repeat.
The staff knew what was up with the coffee they were serving, and when I lamented that I’d missed out on a chance to have a cup of La Falda (it had flown right off the single origin menu), the barista unearthed some Colombian San Agustin, Huila La Primavera that wasn’t on the menu, but apparently was what the barista (the iconicly facial haired Mr. Pete Licata?) used to win the WBC last year.
Whoever used it, it was good, and Gorilla’s second shop demonstrates that the Brooklyn roaster has graduated from being a local hangout cafe to counting itself among the ranks of the city’s serious specialty coffee joints. King Kong has a lot going on.
When Coffee Speaks 
1 Comment