Gorilla Coffee: 97 5th Ave, Brooklyn

Prospect Park is always a great place to go when you need some grassy slopes to counteract the concrete right angles of the city. Every time I traverse the river to Brooklyn and see those skies open up, I automatically find myself in a good mood, and on my way to Prospect Park I was practically skipping in the streets. I was feeling optimistic about my coffee.

Gorilla Coffee is sort of on the way to the park, so we headed over there to scope it out. I got a pretty decent iced latte there once, and the maple latte was strange but intriguing, but today I was feeling cheap and too amped to really need an espresso fix, so I opted for a small iced coffee ($1.75). To my dismay, they were out of pretty much all the kinds of milk. Also the coffee tasted really strange... not terrible in the way that my coffee tasted when I was using a soap-corrupted filter, but bad. Sort of sour. No amount of sugar could mask the issue. Katy and I both gave up on our drinks without finishing them-- an unprecedented feat for something that we actually spend money on. NEW LOW?

On the other hand, Audrey's mocha, although it took a long time to get made, was pretty good. In conclusion: Gorilla's espresso drinks are fine, but the coffee is at best inconsistent-- and that's never a good thing. The ambiance is alright (cute red tables; populace of mostly loners reading or on their laptops), but not incredible. Coffee isn't terribly overpriced, but not a great deal either (fancy espresso drinks are $3.75).

1.5/5 cups a joe