“What we’re trying to do is thread the needle—taking all the bits from the very annoying, elitist world of specialty coffee that are actually real and have benefit to the end result, and balancing that with an approachability to service,” says Grace Brannigan, who quietly opened 27 Cafe in Catskill in September 2025.
“Coming from a longtime service background, I see a lot of basic hospitality missing from coffee. They seem desperate to make people not feel like they can sit for more than three minutes.” Uncomfortable, provisional seating like milk crates and a focus on churn contribute to what Brannigan describes as the type of “actively hostile” coffee shop environment that alienates guests. So they set out to build a different model with Cafe 27, creating a spacious, airy, and comfortable cafe with a dedicated listening room that features plush banquettes and rugs, inviting people to lounge quietly for hours.
Brannigan came to this project after years in restaurant kitchens, including Lil’ Deb’s Oasis and West Taghkanic Diner. The pivot to coffee was, at first, an act of self-preservation. “I was completely burnt out from cooking professionally,” they say. “I was feeling so allergic to the idea of food—I didn’t even want to have pastries here.” They wanted something of their own, but also something quieter: a practice built around repetition, refinement, and the routine pleasure of getting out of the house for a cup of coffee.
But that simplicity belies a complex process. Behind 27’s easygoing service is a coffee program of extreme precision. The cafe uses reverse-osmosis water, then adds its own mineral concentrate back into every ounce to control flavor, texture, and body. Brannigan has cycled through grinders and burr sets, tested coffees from roasters around the world, and narrowed an initial roster of more than a dozen roasters to just a few they feel can deliver the quality and consistency they want.
The compact menu spans espresso drinks, pourover, and an unusually broad tea program. Espresso might mean a washed Ethiopian Goro from Prodigal with a hard-candy profile or a natural Nensebo G1 that leans toward berry cobbler, while the rotating pourover list reaches from Kenya to Colombia and Ethiopia, with tasting notes that run from honeydew and jasmine honey to the delightfully specific “pog juice.” Tea gets equal billing: delicate Zhenghe Gong Mei white tea sits alongside Japanese sencha and houjicha, Sichuan jasmine, buckwheat soba cha and a carrot-based botanical blend with burdock, honeybush, ginger and cinnamon. Matcha and houjicha are available with milk, and even the iced-tea option—roasted buckwheat soba cha—feels distinctly 27. The menu’s precision never tips into fussiness; prices are straightforward, and a complete wage is built into every item, with no expectation of tipping.
The work is exacting, but Brannigan is not dogmatic or preachy. They’re wary of the absurd, almost theatrical seriousness that can attach itself to specialty coffee—the obscure tools, the lab-coat energy, the sense that customers are expected to understand the choreography before they can enjoy the result. A song and dance Brannigan calls “deeply embarrassing.” At 27, the aim is to keep all of that effort backstage.
“You have to make room for people who do not give a shit about what you’re doing,” they say. If someone wants to talk processing methods, grinders, or extraction, the staff can go there. If they simply want a good cup of coffee, that is enough.
It’s a philosophy carried over from restaurant kitchens: take the work seriously without mistaking it for a moral crusade. “We are making dinner,” Brannigan remembers telling kitchen staff. “We do not need to scream about making dinner.”
A Kissa for Catskill
That mix of rigor and approachability extends to the space itself. In the front, a bar for ordering and smattering of tables. Behind is a listening room inspired in part by Japanese jazz kissa, built around Brannigan’s love of recorded music and high-quality sound. Albums play from start to finish—no playlists, no streaming—and the selections are inclusive enough to move from experimental records to Justin Bieber. On their website, a radio plays whatever is sounding in the cafe.
“There’s a part of me that envisioned it full of people just softly sitting and deeply listening, but then at the end of the day, it’s a cafe that’s open, and people are in and out and they’re talking and reading,” Brannigan says. “And so almost immediately you kind of let that idea go while still understanding that these people are doing those things that they would do in other spaces, but they’re doing it in a room that’s quiet and soft and comfortable and it sounds really good.”
The cafe has also hosted music-centered events and film screenings. “It’s always a delicate balance of firmly asserting your taste and your concept—and people respond well to that, because having a vision is important—but also trying to avoid being prescriptive,” Brannigan says. Upcoming events include experimental musicians and composers including Kory Reeder on October 24, Ashcan Orchestra on November 6, Joseph Descosimo on December 5, and Erika Dawn Lyle and Jacqui Cornetta on December 12.
The cafe’s design is meant to feel considered without being precious. The art and furniture is secondhand, much of it sourced from Brannigan’s own home or through Facebook Marketplace. With their partner, a professional upholsterer, they built the red couches in the listening room themselves. “I wanted it to feel like nothing was too precious, but everything was still intentional,” Brannigan says, describing the throughline of the whole cafe.
Even the sound system is thoughtful without becoming fetishized. The main room’s A for Ara speakers were made just up the road in Catskill, while albums live on a local server rather than a streaming service. More consequentially, Brannigan says, the rooms were acoustically treated so music can play at real volume without turning conversation into combat. “The ‘audiophile community’ is just, like, retired men in their basement—it’s a deeply antisocial thing, and a very expensive thing,” Brannigan says. “I wanted more people to understand the potential for recorded music and get to experience that without the barrier of entry.”
Now, after a year spent refining the coffee and learning how the space wants to function, 27 is hitting its stride. “It’s only been a couple of months that we feel like everything we put out feels really delicious, really high quality, and repeatable,” Brannigan says. “We’re in an actual groove.”
Despite wanting to escape the demands of a professional kitchen, Brannigan doesn’t seem one to sit still for long. They are toying with the idea of an in-house roasting program, and they recently hired a chef. “We have reached the end of the road as to not selling food here,” Brannigan says a little wistfully. Early versions of the menu include breakfast sandwiches and sweet and savory plates that incorporate seasonal ingredients like kabocha squash, plus house-made pastries. Evening hours may eventually follow.
If the quiet dedication to quality in sound and coffee are anything to go by, the food will be delicious without shouting about it.
27 Cafe
8 W Bridge Street, Catskill, NY 12414https://27cafe.info/
