I found Hyunji Kim, a coffee shop barback who works equally as hard at a similar job: making sure dishes are clean, pushing out drinks during rushes, keeping milk stations looking beautiful, and giving invaluable support to her baristas. She left a corporate job at a Big Four accounting firm to follow her very specific dream of working at Joe, accepting not only a salary decrease, but the inevitability that she'd have to start at the bottom rung of the coffee shop ladder as a barback. More

Oatmeal cookie fans should head to Joe the Art of Coffee, where the soft and chewy cookies are studded with just as many plump currants as there are oats. More

If there's one thing Iris Cafe's Rachel Graville knows her way around, it's a boiled egg on bread. So when it was announced she'd be curating the upscale student lunch program for the new Joe Cafe at Columbia University, this was good news to all uptown stomachs. More

[Photo: Kathy YL Chan] There are two places in the city where I enjoy "everyday" iced chocolate. This is iced chocolate that isn't obscenely rich, thick, or velvety—it's closer to a chilly glass of milk chocolate, one you can... More

[Photograph: Kathy YL Chan] If the weather keeps up and humid the way it has been for the last week, I'm going be drinking, many, many of these Espresso Granitas ($4) from Joe the Art of Coffee. It's the... More

The contenders: Milk and Cookies, Insomnia Bakery, Jack's Stir Brew, Bouley Bakery, Balthazar, Dessert Club, Paradis To Go, Roasting Plant, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and the Downtown Cookie Company. More

[Photo: Kathy Chan] I was waiting in line at Joe's the other day when I spotted this pumpkin muffin baked by Bread Alone. And considering my goal to hunt down every delicious pumpkin sweet in the city, I couldn't... More

For McDonald's, this is the biggest roll-out since they birthed Egg McMuffins and the rest of the breakfast line. McCafe, the new beverage-based initiative that's supposed to quiet the drip coffee haters, will eventually be located in 85 percent... More

Should restaurant owners make known their political stances, if they so choose? Or should partisan positions be left at the café door? More