Lake Effect's been celebrating coffee month with a series of interviews and features on the beverage and the shops where we enjoy drinking it. Valentine Coffee Roasters in Washington Heights prides itself on having a one-stop shop for roasting and creating a cup of coffee.
Owners Robb Kashevarof and Joe Gilsdorf started Valentine Coffee Roasters in search of a balanced cup that was "not so darkly roasted that it's oily and bitter and burned, and not so lightly roasted that it's grassy and unfinished."
Kashevarof describes the small shop with the roastery in back as "kind of a marriage between walk-up Italian espresso bar meets winery tasting room, because you are able to try everything that's on the menu."
"When you're standing at the bar having a shot, you're a couple feet away from the roasting operation, and there's a lot of flow back and forth between the two," says Gilsdorf. "Whenever we're open up front, we're in back roasting... so if you have a question about the coffee or a particular origin you can ask that of somebody who's actually roasting the coffee."
