Where not to go for coffee in Manhattan: M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Coffees

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M. Rohrs' House of Fine Teas & Coffees

 

M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees has a com­plete and utter con­tempt of their pay­ing cus­tomers, and has lost my busi­ness, for­ever. Yes­ter­day after­noon, they kicked out myself and every other sin­gle cus­tomer, cit­ing a new pol­icy that accused us all of “loi­ter­ing.” I am not mak­ing this up.

M. Rohrs is one of the last remain­ing cof­fee houses on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. As oth­ers have noted on Yelp, they rou­tinely invent new poli­cies, such as chang­ing the terms of cus­tomer loy­alty cards (in fact, I think they sim­ply rescinded them alto­gether at one point). Until the very recent past, any cus­tomers that wished to sit down after 7PM must have ordered at least $10 from the menu. That pol­icy was not entirely unrea­son­able, but it was unfea­si­ble. M. Rohrs is not a restau­rant, and it is actu­ally dif­fi­cult to spend more than $10 at a cof­fee house. But as of yes­ter­day at least, that require­ment has now expanded to all hours, every day. It’s also worth not­ing that the new pol­icy did not seem to spec­ify a dol­lar amount, so I sup­pose they can arbi­trar­ily eject any­body they deem to have spent too little.

Here’s what hap­pened yes­ter­day after­noon at about 4-5PM: I bought a cof­fee and muf­fin, tipped, and sat down. About 10 min­utes later, the vol­ume of the music sud­denly got VERY LOUD (painfully, dis­tract­ingly so) for no appar­ent rea­son. Then one of their employ­ees vis­ited every cus­tomer in turn and pre­sented us with a long-worded sign explain­ing their new seat­ing pol­icy, which used the word “loi­ter” sev­eral times. I don’t think this employee speaks Eng­lish as a first lan­guage, so there was no oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss it with him, even if the music had not been deaf­en­ing. He was not apolo­getic. Every sin­gle cus­tomer in the store at that time had only pur­chased cof­fee and pas­tries, so we all had to leave. There were only about a half-dozen cus­tomers at the time, so the man­age­ment can’t claim that we were hog­ging seats from hypo­thet­i­cal meal-eating cus­tomers (of which there were none). If the new pol­icy had been posted up front when I placed my order, I did not see it.

I used to like to go to M. Rohrs occa­sion­ally, some­times for a sand­wich or some­times just cof­fee. I would usu­ally sit and work or just read for about an hour or two, which I don’t think is unrea­son­able at any cof­fee shop, Star­bucks not excluded. All the other neg­a­tive com­ments on Yelp are true; the ser­vice is often rude and neglect­ful (I once had them com­pletely for­get to make my sand­wich — but at least they apol­o­gized), and they charge for wire­less access and for elec­tric­ity. Worse is their atti­tude; it would be one thing to sim­ply charge peo­ple to plug in their lap­tops, but the signs plas­tered about the place couch it in terms of “theft of util­i­ties,” essen­tially accus­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. After the clos­ing of the vastly supe­rior cof­fee shop DTUT a few years ago, M. Rohrs is pretty much the only place of its type in the neigh­bor­hood, so I used to patron­ize it any­way. No more.

The word “loi­ter­ing,” as any lit­er­ate per­son should know, has crim­i­nal con­no­ta­tions, and I sus­pect the man­age­ment of M. Rohrs knows this. I deeply, deeply resent being called a “loi­terer” despite hav­ing paid (and tipped!) for cof­fee and a pas­try. Upon leav­ing for the last time, I only regret­ted not demand­ing my tip back.

Per­haps they intend to tran­si­tion away from being a cof­fee house into a restau­rant with a take-out cof­fee bar. If so, they will have to hire more staff, improve the speed and accu­racy of their ser­vice, toss out the couches, and stop accus­ing their pay­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. Good luck with that. If any­one asso­ci­ated with the estab­lish­ment hap­pens to read this, I invite you to please com­ment below. I would love to hear your jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. I signed up for Yelp for the sole pur­pose of post­ing a copy of this review, and I sin­cerely hope lots of poten­tial cus­tomers read it.

So that you know where not to go get your cof­fee, M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees is located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, at 310 East 86th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

    6 thoughts on “Where not to go for coffee in Manhattan: M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Coffees”

    1. I love that peo­ple are treated like this in small busi­ness. How many times have i gone into a cof­fee shop or Star­bucks and there’s not a seat to be found. What the case is 99% of the time, self impor­tant peo­ple on their Mac Books occupy every­thing.
      Do you need to seem impor­tant, or is it that your such a D bag that you think spend­ing $2.50 on cof­fee enti­tles you to that seat for 6 hours? Plus your power cords run­ning up the elec­tric bill.
      You guys for­get that the world does not revolve around “YOU”. I love my iPhone, Mac and cof­fee as much as any­one. What I do after 15 min­utes is give my seat to the next group of peo­ple com­ing in. Its called consideration.

    2. Regard­ing your ear­lier Yelp review of Rohr’s note that It was closed by a restau­rant inspec­tor last Friday.

      Rohr’s (53)

      Vio­la­tions from 08/06/2010 Inspec­tion
      Tip! “Crit­i­cal” vio­la­tions are dis­played in red.

      Vio­la­tion points: 53

      Estab­lish­ment Closed by DOHMH. Vio­la­tions were cited in the fol­low­ing area(s) and those requir­ing imme­di­ate action were addressed.

      San­i­tary Vio­la­tions
      1) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxy­gen pack­aged foods above 38 ºF) except dur­ing nec­es­sary prepa­ra­tion.
      2) Appro­pri­ately scaled metal stem-type ther­mome­ter or ther­mo­cou­ple not pro­vided or used to eval­u­ate tem­per­a­tures of poten­tially haz­ardous foods dur­ing cook­ing, cool­ing, reheat­ing and hold­ing.
      3) Evi­dence of mice or live mice present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.
      4) Facil­ity not ver­min proof. Harbor­age or con­di­tions con­ducive to attract­ing ver­min to the premises and/or allow­ing ver­min to exist.
      5) Other gen­eral violation.

    3. I bring friends there occa­sion­ally. It is well worth the price of the antics. It has all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Fawlty Tow­ers… Basil (Don­ald the owner), Manuel (Jose the waiter) and Polly (Sonia the wait­ress who recently quit in dis­gust). Just like DTUT was the inspi­ra­tion for “Friends” (Cen­tral Perk) . This place would make an excel­lent restau­rant real­ity show.

    4. Pure Irony (Loi­ter­ing Recommended)

      QUICK BITE/Closter; A Cof­fee Shop With a Difference

      By Marge Perry

      Pub­lished: Feb­ru­ary 15, 2004 (nyt)

      For every­one who has had too many homog­e­nized cof­fee drinks from too many cof­fee shop chains, sal­va­tion comes in the form of a funky lit­tle respite tucked in at the tail end of down­town Closter.

      Feel the ten­sion slide off your body as you walk into this endear­ingly cramped and nar­row space, with its black tin ceil­ing, mis­matched stuffed chairs and walls barely vis­i­ble beneath this and that (includ­ing a framed news­pa­per from Dec. 8, 1941, a hand-lettered sign declar­ing ”Loi­ter­ing Rec­om­mended” and bits of sal­vaged archi­tec­tural remnants).

      The sur­prise is how much more there is here than just the shabby chic charm. This rel­a­tively recent (about six years old) annex to the 108-year-old M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas and Cof­fee on East 85th Street in New York City car­ries the same superb spe­cial blends — the roast recipes are a care­fully guarded secret — as the orig­i­nal store. Look closely through the big glass jars of ever-popular rugelach (apri­cot, rasp­berry, choco­late hazel­nut and cin­na­mon raisin, 60 cents apiece or $11.20 a pound) and you will see some of the orig­i­nal tin cof­fee bins from the New York shop that are more than 100 years old.

      The intensely fla­vored, ele­gantly smooth Havana roast is one of the many cof­fees avail­able daily as a fresh brewed cup ($1.33-$2.17) or as whole beans by the pound ($9.99). On alter­nat­ing week­ends, Hawai­ian Kona and Jamaican Blue Moun­tain take turns as the fea­tured brewed spe­cials (prices range from $3 to $6 a cup).

      Local high school stu­dents have found a per­fect hang­out in Rohrs’, while cof­fee lovers travel from near and far to pick up their cup — or pound — of joe. Marge Perry

      M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas and Cof­fees, 207 Closter Dock Road, Closter; (201) 750‑8400. Win­ter hours: Open 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sun­day to Wednes­day and 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thurs­day to Saturday.

    5. I bring friends there occa­sion­ally. It is well worth the price of the antics. It has all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Fawlty Tow­ers… Basil (Don­ald the owner), Manuel (Jose the waiter) and Polly (Sonia the wait­ress who recently quit in dis­gust). Just like DTUT was the inspi­ra­tion for “Friends” (Cen­tral Perk) . This place would make an excel­lent restau­rant real­ity show.

    6. You are such a leach­ing loi­terer. You “loit” all over the place. Big fat, loi­ter­ing loi­terer, you are. The Dork Report? More like, “The Loi­terer Report!” Sheesh. (seri­ously, though. that place sounds lame and they deserve to go out of business.)

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