Elephant Grounds

If your ever in Hong Hong this is a must try! The coffee shop is located in the back of a really cool store. The staff is extremely nice (side note it is cash only). We wanted to try the other location that serves food and ice cream but we didnt make it to it unfortunatley. Will definatley go back if I am ever in HK again.

The ice cream sandwich of the week was the rose tea with strawberry lady fingers or something like that? Except the fingers tasted like warm, artificial pink plastic… the rest of the sandwich was merely average. Looked good in the picture, but ultimately was disappointing when it came down to eating it.

Brooklyn is a state of mind and hipster culture is international. Walking in here is like walking into a boutique in NYC. Or maybe not, maybe it’s now like walking into a boutique anywhere in the hip world. Tupac and other hip-​hop (scrupulously selected to be credible?) plays, and the place is full of expensive watches and leather phone cases, and bags that look somehow both rugged and fussy, and very clunky glasses destined for very beautiful faces, and also cute postcards and papercraft and sundry knickknackery. All these things are expertly curated for maximum hipness, and arranged as if ready to be photographed for Kinfolk or Cereal or Monocle magazines. Even the staff seemed curated. It was a little too much hipness for me, but…
In the back there’s a coffee shop! And all the overwhelming hipness I could barely tolerate up front, I adored when applied to coffee making. I ordered a pourover. The barista sifted out a single serving of beans and offered them for me to smell, then ground them and offered the same again. They ended up making a swell cup of flavorful, slightly sour coffee, and this cup took a good and serious five minutes to prepare, which probably doesn’t matter but which I nevertheless enjoyed – the five minutes of watching and waiting, I mean.
Aside from coffee, they offer a smoke-​infused homemade vanilla ice cream affogato and ice cream sandwich, which I very sadly didn’t try. They offer a few teas, and a Thai Ice Tea that tasted great but, note, is not fresh, it is bottled.
The coffee shop has five or six seats at a counter, a few more on a bench, and then an outdoor patio that could fit 5 to 10. The patio faces a courtyard with a banyan tree and a swing set and a small street beyond. It was swell.

Elephant grounds is a cute little coffee shop situated at the back of Woaw on Gough Street. You have a choice of either sitting at the bar watching the baristas do there thing or on the terrace. The bar is my place of choice. You can so much watching the pros in action.
A good range of coffee is available. The espresso based options are fairly standard. A fairly dark roasted blend is used which provides a nice chocolatey finish, especially in the milk based drinks.
Of more interest are a choice of beans brewed using either the siphon or drip methods. Although they aren’t cheap, I think that is the best way to really experience the skill of the Elephant Grounds team.
Aside from coffee, there are not many reasons to visit. There are some cookies which look nice enough (but insufficiently tempting to piqué my interest) and tea. Consequently, if you don’t love your coffee, there are better options elsewhere.