Coffee ShopEast Village


Photo by Greg Navarro for Beholdr
We could be in Naples or Valencia. Except for the old-school East Village vibes, that is. Opened in 2007 by Jamie McCormick and Elizabeth Quijada, Abraco means hug in Portuguese. And it has that feeling, like a warm embrace. A place you don’t want to leave. Maybe it’s the wooden coffee bar, the red leather banquettes, and the steady flow of local characters. There’s also a tiny outside garden in the front, where you’ll find two tiny tables and a standing coffee bar. It gets super crowded on weekends and sunny afternoons. Thankfully, there’s a laptop ban.
Go for the olive oil cake, the Americano or cappuccino, and the feeling of a place that became a neighborhood institution before everyone started trying to become one.

Coffee ShopEast Village
This place is tiny, but their commitment to coffee is huge. Take a pause at one of Chinatown’s best little caffeine stops, tucked just off the neighborhood’s busiest streets.

RestaurantEast Village
East Village cool kids have come here for decades, and it still delivers — Moroccan eggs at brunch, lamb tagine late at night, all in a room of hot pinks and tall plants.

MuseumEast Village
Downtown legends, ambitious shows, and giant industrial architecture combine in one of the East Village's most unexpectedly great art spaces. Warhol, Haring, Basquiat, Kelley — the Brant Foundation feels like walking through the last forty years of contemporary art history.

Alternative SpaceEast Village
The city abandoned this 19th Century elementary school in 1976. Artists moved into the classrooms and it still runs on that make-something-from-nothing energy today.