![]() It’s my guilty pleasure, almost a vice, rather than the pricey lattes I shouldn’t buy and the cranberry muffin that I find dangerously delicious: people-watching. My thoughts float away from the task at hand and my eyes follow suit, drifting from the Google Doc to the cafe’s other patrons. ![]() Writing essays and struggling to finish physics homework that I will never fully grasp is my primary focus, but I’m human. My only indulgence is the $7 chai and the discounted day-old baked good I get at the counter. If a professor or my mother asks, I go to my unofficially owned table to do homework and nothing else. Staking my claim like I’m a miner in the Gold Rush comes naturally to me. I’m looking forward to testing out every wine on the menu as I incessantly suggest Slimák as a perfect place to meet up with friends: a new neighborhood addition that feels like it’s always been there.It’s not mine, but I claim it anyway - the small, wooden half-bench-half-chair table tucked in the far corner of Newsbar on University Place. Since Slimák opened, a bulletin board behind the counter has promised, “Wine & Beer Coming Soon!” The owners say that they will begin serving alcohol in a few weeks. For the coffee, they have a variety of milk options, and I usually go luxe with half-and-half (they also have soy milk if you ask for it). I go to Slimák less often on weekdays, but when I do, I like to enjoy a coffee with a croissant theirs are perfectly flaky, served with a small container of softened butter. And Andrea can make the (cage-free) eggs just right, whether you’re a weirdo like me or not. I have a special love for the chicken apple sausage hash off the weekend brunch menu, which comes with two eggs any style and a choice of toast (all for $10) the steak and eggs and the smoked salmon hash are also can’t-miss. (My policy was that eggs should stay in cakes and cookies, where they belong.) That’s when I learned I do like them-as long as the yolks are well-blended and well-done, the opposite of how most of the world’s egg-eaters prefer them. I tend to order like Meg Ryan’s character in When Harry Met Sally, full of substitutions and special requests, and I thought I didn’t like eggs until graduating from college. They notice my Beavis & Butthead Doc Martens, and help me out when I’m running late for work and in need an extremely quick and delicious sandwich. But I look forward to saying hello to Jan and Andrea. I often want to be left alone to read and write with coffee at a well-lit table. I’ll admit: I’m not the most gregarious customer. She wants customers to feel like they are family, too. ![]() Slimák is the Slovak word for snail, and also the last name of Andrea’s grandfather, who watches over the café from a framed photograph on the wall. “We are very personal with the customers, and become a big family and friends. “We want to bring the neighborhood together,” she told me. Now they have their own place (in addition to staying on with Newsbar), in a neighborhood Andrea describes as “like a vacation” compared to that one near Union Square. Before opening Slimák, they were part-owners of Newsbar on University Place in Manhattan. Andrea is also the café’s executive chef. I went in on opening day and met the friendly couple from Slovakia who run the place, Jan and Andrea Balascak. For months, I peered in the windows and thought of the Tom Waits song “ What’s He Building?” Then in June, the sign went up: Slimák, with an image of a snail design on a cup of coffee.Įvery new detail thrilled me: wooden tables that evoke a European bistro, bright red bar stools, a pressed-tin ceiling - and then, one morning, the smell of coffee. Whenever I see construction in my neighborhood of Sunset Park, my first thought is, I hope it’s a bookstore/café. When it’s close enough that I can still pick up my wireless network, that amplifies my hope that it will be something great. Don’t miss the Chicken Apple Sausage Hash.
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