Coffee Shop - 04.15.2008 - nitrolicious.com

Coffee Shop
29 Union Sq W Ste 1
New York, NY 10003
212.243.7969

The Scene
This place is past its prime but still trying hard to remain a scene, with striking retro decor, blaring music, dim lighting–and a waitstaff made up of out-of-work models whose snootiness and famously bad service is both humorous and irritating. The crowd is a mix of late-night NYU students, hungover brunchers looking to be seen, and various Union Square passers-by.

The Food
The most dependable route is to stick to appetizers–the cheese bread is quite good–and drinks. The bar does yeomanly work with cocktails, strangely excepting the acrid house caipirinha. Most of the dishes here are unmemorable, alternating between Brazilian dishes, like the thick, fishy moqueca stew of head-on shrimp, toughish scallops, and clams, and crowd-pleasers like char-grilled hamburgers and veggie burgers. The “gaucho” steak is large, lunkish, and likeable, though hardly prime; Brazilian churrasquino–grilled beef sandwich–is bready and tastes mostly of onion. – Citysearch

I always pass by the Coffee Shop when I’m around Union Square and it always seems to be busy. A few weeks back after I dropped off Cookie to get groomed, my mom and I walked up to Union Square to let Puffy exercise a bit. After awhile we got hungry and very little places allow dogs at the restaurant unless its outdoors so we opted for Coffee Shop. The waitress seemed nice, after seating us outside she brought over a bowl of water for Puffy too. We were both starving and it took the waitress awhile to bring us water and take our order, they were just not too efficient. The food was ok only and the prices weren’t super cheap neither – my bill came out to over $40. When it came time to pay, it took them awhile to give us the bill – we had to ask twice before getting it. I personally would not go back next time, my mom agrees. Did you have a better experience?

More pics after the jump…