Restaurant Visit: Aussie Style Invades Brooklyn at Brunswick Cafe - Gardenista
Photography by Douglas Lyle Thompson for Gardenista. “It’s a lovely immigration story,” says Alexander Hall, who came to the United States “with nothing” eight years ago. According to Hall, there’s a big difference between Australian and North American coffee shops. He now owns five cafes in Brooklyn and Manhattan, with a sixth about to launch and more in the works. The entrance to Brunswick is on a leafy block of Decatur Street. Hall hires Ty Tan Designs to do his plantings. A horticulturalist who trained at Cornell, Tan also installed a vertical garden at Hall’s Rosella Coffee Shop, on the Lower East Side. “Alex is really into plants,” says Ty Tan. Hall planned the interior to have several seating areas, including this quiet corner toward the back. Now spick and span, Brunswick was carved out of a storefront space that had been boarded up for a decade. Brunswick’s pastries are made at a sister cafe, Bluebird Coffee Shop. The excellent coffee is supplied by Counter Culture, based in Durham, NC. Though it appalls some New York brunchers, Hall’s cafes are all “bagel-free zones.” There are no French fries, either. Customers tend to live in the neighborhood–and when they’re here, they talk to each other. You got it: Stems, Brooklyn’s Only Flower Shop in a Bar.