Our friends at F*cked in Park Slope wrote a nice preview of our plans for HUNGRY GHOST
As a college student visiting friends in Portsmouth, NH in the late nineties, on more than one occasion we’d end an evening of debauchery with a trip to THE FRIENDLY TOAST, a crunchy hippie diner with locales in Portsmouth & Cambridge, MA. The waitresses smelled like patchouli, the atmosphere was laminated collage kitsch & the food was badass breakfast.
…so when I got an email about a new place opening in the Park Slope area called “Hungry Ghost,” I started having word-association flashbacks to The Friendly Toast. As it turned out, my flashbacks were right on target.
Hungry Ghost is a new coffee shop opening in the next few weeks on the east side of Flatbush & 6th, in the same triangle of food & drink that includes FLATBUSH FARM, PURBIRD & CUBANA CAFÉ. It’s the latest venture from Murat Uyaroglu, the owner of PROSPECT PERK, the tiny coffee shop just a few blocks down at Flatbush & Sterling.
As it is, the Park Slope area has its fair share of coffee shops…& for good reason. Coffee wakes our asses up. Coffee shops dispense said uppers AND provide a hangout for breeders & freelancers alike. It’s NOT “socially acceptable” to chill at a bar at 9am. You need to balance out the alcohol with coffee if you want to be an effective lush, people. Coffee shops are KEY.
Murat believes that you can never have enough coffee shops. When I asked him “You have Prospect Perk right down the road…why another coffee shop?” he noted that 70% of the population drinks coffee. We here at FIPS don’t have the time or energy to do extensive research & we fully embrace wild speculation, so I’m going to see his 70% and raise him 15%. That’s 85%! When it comes to the coffee abstention population, it’s pretty much just breedlings & Mormons & people with heart problems.
But yeah…why another coffee shop?
Prospect Perk seats maybe ten people. Hungry Ghost will seat somewhere in the neighborhood of three times that, meaning that it should be more of a community hangout.
When you walk in the front door, there’s a stage area in the window to the left, seating in the window to your right, some seating between the front & the counter and a row of bar seating against the right wall.
There’s really no coffee shop like it in the immediate area. It also won’t hurt that it’ll be the closest locale to the Bergen stop on the 2 train.
Then there’s the fact that they’ll be serving STUMPTOWN COFFEE. Over the last dozen plus years, the Portland, OR-based coffee roasters have made a name for themselves with their high-quality coffee. They’ve opened a limited amount of physical locales & have been very discerning about where their coffee is served. They make sure that the folks working in said coffee dispensers are properly trained on the best ways to serve Stumptown. Murat & a few of the workers have already been down to their Red Hook locale to get the 411 on how to get the best out of Stumptown’s coffee. When it comes to iced coffee, Hungry Ghost will be serving a cold drip brew that’s been brewed for 24 hours by putting coffee into the machine, putting ice on top & letting it drip overnight. Personally, I’ve tried Stumptown’s bottled cold brew & that shizz is tasty even sans milk & sugar.
They’ll also have 15-20 teas from SERENDIPITEA & some baked goods from LITTLE BUDDY BISCUIT COMPANY, who had a physical locale at 5th & 18th for about a year & a half before closing. Little Buddy will add cookies & brownies & the like to the menu and Murat is quite convinced that people will realize that Pete of Little Buddy is some sort of baking genius. While there’s not an open-flame kitchen, you’ll also be able to grab stuff like paninis, smoothies & salads.
That’s what we’re looking at to start with. As time goes on, Murat has even more plans. He’ll be using the stage to host comedy & music nights. Knitting night? Want to hang your art? Sell your book? Sure. Just ask him. Basically, he wants the place to be an artistic community space. Eventually, beer & wine should find their way into the equation as well.
…but back to that name. As the story goes, a few years back Murat was up visiting Portsmouth with some friends. One morning, they awoke & were discussing where to go for breakfast. The Friendly Toast kept coming up as the obvious choice. When one friend, unfamiliar with the crunchy restaurant, asked “So are we going to Hungry Ghost?” Murat had a perfect name for a yet-to-be envisioned coffee shop.
To boot, in Buddhism the concept of the “hungry ghost” refers to people who are driven in an intense, animalistic way. If that concept doesn’t suit you F’D Park Slopers to a T, I don’t know what does.
Read way more from Shawn at EATDRINKSNACK.COM.
And read the original article here.