John T.
Google
I've been going to this place for years, since even before it changed its name from Caffe Pronto and attained national fame as Ceremony. For quite some years now I've seen it bougeifying, and my discontent reached its complaint threshhold this week. It used to be hipster. The clientele looked like coffeeheads, expats from Baltimore, grad students from St. John's. The roastery had delectable pastries from Severna Park's Hawthorne bakery, with European sophistication in single-size portions for under $5. I used to go daily, and it was a mecca for my N.Y. family and friends. No more. Not the same. The price of a cup of coffee just seems to go up and up, not just absolutely, but proportionally. The latest is a $1 "au lait" charge for steaming a couple of ounces of milk to add to my $4.25 Americano; if I don't change the 15% default tip on the app, that totals to $6.41. For watered down espresso and some hot milk. To be fair, the cold milk is still free, so I guess the $1 charge is for the 20 seconds it takes to steam 2 oz. of it. (I got started on the steamed milk because the Ceremony style just seems to get brighter and brighter, and to my taste sour, and the steamed milk seems to fix it.) If I want to add a pastry to my $6.41 Americano, the new ones from Ingrano are oversized, overpriced, and overdetermined (sprinkles anyone, or Pillsbury swirls on top?). Meanwhile, the newest generation of baristas seem to me to have a chat-box of their own going on behind the counter, so you're more likely to get impassive civility than personal pleasantries, let alone a little conversation. There is liable to be a line (use the app to cut the line electronically), and perhaps a rococco coffee order in front of you requiring negotiations, and perhaps a breed dog or coiffed toddler underfoot. At the tables there are millenials lost in their laptops, or a guy on a cellphone, or a family outing. This out-of-the-way roastery has been discovered by the in-the-know crowd. Used to be hip; now it's just popular. If you have a breed dog that likes to people-watch, this is the place.