Sloffy Gallery, a café on Palisade Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, brews pour-over coffee with beans from Brooklyn specialty roaster SEY Coffee. The shop also serves teas and ceramics brought in from Korea along with Japanese wagashi sweets. We visited to check out the menu and the atmosphere.
On Palisade Avenue in Fort Lee, there is a café whose name means "slowly." Sloffy Gallery opened last June. The name combines "Slow-ify" and "Gallery," reflecting the idea of selecting and presenting coffee, tea, desserts and household goods as if they were on display.
What draws coffee lovers' attention is the beans. The café has teamed up with Brooklyn specialty roaster SEY Coffee to make pour-over coffee. SEY is known for light roasts that bring out the beans' natural acidity and aroma, and its coffee is hard to find outside New York.
SEY Coffee in Fort Lee
Order a pour-over and it comes with a small card describing the beans. The coffee our reporter had was "Chorso Bule" from the Gedeb region of Ethiopia. The washed-process beans were grown at an altitude of 2,450 meters above sea level, and SEY Coffee describes the flavors as peach tea, melon and jasmine.
According to its website, the café adjusts the mineral content of its water separately to brew coffee because of New Jersey's hard water. The beans change from time to time. In early October, it also featured Ethiopian "Demeka Becha (washed)" and "Mate Matiwos (honey)." Boxes of SEY Coffee beans and Sloffy Gallery's house blend beans are displayed side by side on the shelves in the shop, and both are available for purchase.
House blend for lattes
Espresso drinks use a house blend roasted by the brand director. It is a medium roast mixing beans from Huila, Colombia, and Chiapas, Mexico, with notes of caramel, nuts and chocolate. Order a latte and a brown card with information about the blend comes with it.
According to the menu (as of Sept. 2), an espresso is $4, an Americano $5 and a café latte $6. Signature drinks include an espresso tonic with orange syrup ($7), a sweet cream latte topped with cream, and a nutty cream latte with peanut cream and hazelnut ($7.50 each). For those who don't drink coffee, there is a Shizuoka matcha latte ($7) and caffeine-free blended teas steeped with mugwort and rosemary, citron and perilla leaf, or red bean and kabocha squash ($6 each).
Wagashi and Korean ceramics
Desserts center on yokan ($7.50) and nerikiri ($9.50) made by a Japanese artisan who makes red bean paste by hand in New York. The offerings include lemon-citron and cranberry-coconut yokan and mugwort and sweet potato nerikiri. There is also a pound cake dessert served with ice cream ($10), as well as cookies, scones and pound cake ($6–$7). Toast is also available, served as sliced white bread with butter and jam.
The tea is brought in directly from Korea, and the ceramics and tableware used in the shop are also by Korean artists. Ceramics and tea utensils are displayed on a shelf and console at one side of the shop, and they are for sale along with the beans, matcha and blended teas.
A space for staying quietly
The shop is spacious and tidy, almost sparse. A grid of ceiling lights casts a soft glow like traditional Korean hanji paper windows, and a dark blue marble bar runs across the space. Seating consists mainly of window benches and low tables; there are not many seats, but they are generously spaced. Some customers also stopped by with their dogs.
The café continues to hold coffee events, including a "bar takeover" in September featuring a winner of a Canadian barista competition. It is open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.