Clipper Coffee ★9.7

City Island is the strangest place in New York City: a mile and a half of clapboard houses, boatyards and seafood counters sitting out in Long Island Sound, technically the Bronx, spiritually New England. What it did not have, until fairly recently, was a coffee shop worth the walk. Clipper Coffee was opened by a man who moved to the island, looked for somewhere to sit with a cup and other people, failed to find it, and built it himself — and who then went several steps further and started roasting the beans. Today the same business runs a roastery under a separate name, which makes this small shop on the island’s main street one of the few genuinely farm-to-cup addresses in the borough.

Highlights

• Opened in 2018 by a resident, for residents. Peter Gennari spent close to two decades in Manhattan finance, came through cancer, started a family, moved out to the island — and opened the room he had been looking for and could not find.
• The coffee is now roasted in-house. Since 2022 the business has run its own roaster under the Bronx Roasting Company name, so the espresso in your cup is roasted by the same people who sell it to you.
• An all-electric, zero-emission roasting machine. The roaster is a Bellwether — a ventless electric system rather than a gas drum — which is why a small business could roast at all without a warehouse and a flue.
• Beans through a direct relationship in Colombia. The house sources from a farm near Arbeláez, in the Colombian coffee belt, run by friends of the owner, with biodynamic growing and fair-trade and organic certification.
• Part café, part gallery, part reading room. Nautical furnishings, paintings and sculpture by island artists on the walls, a back room with a children’s play corner and secondhand books you can read on the spot or take home.
• A coffee tuk-tuk parked outside. A retrofitted two-seat scooter-taxi fitted with a La Marzocco espresso machine works as a mobile bar — an idea that makes complete sense on an island full of summer foot traffic.

What’s in the cup

Clipper began the way most small cafés begin: buying from a respected outside roaster, in this case Counter Culture, whose Big Trouble blend was the house espresso in the early years. That is worth knowing because it tells you the bar was built to specialty standards before it had any ambitions of its own. The shift came in 2022, when the owner bought a Bellwether roaster — an all-electric, ventless, zero-emission machine — and launched the Bronx Roasting Company, on the stated grounds that nobody in the borough was roasting coffee at the time. That claim is the owner’s own, but the rest of it is verifiable: there is a roastery, it is small-batch, and the café is its shop window.

The sourcing story is unusually concrete for a business this size. Rather than buying whatever a broker offers, the house works with friends who own a farm near Arbeláez, in Colombia’s coffee country, growing on biodynamic principles with fair-trade and organic certification. That gives the roast a stable backbone — Colombian coffee is the safest possible house style for a room where most orders are espresso with milk, sweet and balanced rather than aggressively bright — and it gives the café something almost nobody on this island can say: it knows exactly whose hands picked the cherries.

Practically, expect the full modern range rather than an Italian bar’s short list: espresso and the milk drinks built on it, brewed filter coffee, and cold brew, which on a summer weekend out here probably outsells everything else. There is also a wide non-coffee side — teas hot and iced, lemonade, juices — which matters more than it sounds, because a large share of the customers arrive as families with children in tow.

Who’s behind it

Peter Gennari is a City Islander by choice rather than birth. He spent nearly twenty years in finance in Manhattan, came through a cancer diagnosis, started a family, and moved out to the island; four years later he opened the café. His own explanation of why is the least pretentious founding statement you will read about any coffee shop: he was looking for a place to hang out, could not find one, so he decided to create it.

What he built reflects that motive precisely. The stated ambition was a nautically furnished civic center for the island — somewhere people read, meet and swap ideas — rather than a business optimized around throughput. The gallery walls, the used books, the children’s corner and the community-noticeboard feel of the place all follow from it. The roasting company that grew out of the café four years later is the same instinct pointed at a different problem: if the borough has no roaster, build one.

What to come here for

The strongest case for Clipper is the one the founder made himself: it is the island’s living room. Come to meet someone, come to read, come to sit with a laptop for a while, come with small children — all four work, which is rare. The back room with the play area and the books is the specific feature that makes it a genuine option for parents, and the reason a visit here does not have to be a twenty-minute transaction.

For laptop work it is a reasonable but not unlimited bet. The room is small — roughly the footprint of a large apartment — so on a busy summer Saturday a table for one person and a computer is antisocial and probably unavailable. Weekday mornings and the off-season are a different story: this is exactly the kind of neighborhood café where a couple of hours of quiet work is normal. The café does not publish a policy on outlets or Wi-Fi terms, so treat a long working session as something to confirm at the counter rather than assume.

The other scenario that fits perfectly is the walk. City Island is a destination for a stroll — the length of it takes half an hour at an easy pace, ending at the water — and a coffee at the start or a cold brew at the end is the natural shape of that afternoon. Takeaway is well covered, and the mobile tuk-tuk bar outside exists precisely for people who are not going to sit down.

The room

Around twelve hundred square feet: small by Manhattan standards, generous for this island. The furnishings are nautical without being a theme-park version of it, which on City Island is less a decorating choice than an accurate reflection of where you are. The walls carry paintings and sculpture by artists who live here, and the work rotates, so the café genuinely functions as a small gallery rather than as a place with pictures on the wall.

The back room is the part worth knowing about, at least as the shop was laid out when it opened. It holds a children’s play area and a shelf of secondhand books that you can read in place or buy, and it absorbs exactly the noise a front counter cannot. That single decision — giving up sellable floor space to families and readers — tells you more about the intent here than any amount of signage. The trade-off is honest: in high season the room fills, the front is loud, and a small café on a small island simply cannot expand to meet a July weekend.

With the coffee

The food side is a bakery counter rather than a kitchen: baked goods to go with the cup, plus the cold drinks and juices that make it workable for a family stop. There is no public evidence that the baking is done on the premises, and in a shop of this size with a roaster in the business it would be surprising if it were, so treat it as a café that takes coffee seriously and food adequately. Anyone expecting brunch plates should walk on down the island — the seafood houses at the southern end are the reason most visitors come out here in the first place.

When to come

The island runs on a seasonal clock more than a daily one, and this café runs with it. Summer weekends are the peak by a wide margin, when day-trippers arrive for the water and the seafood and every business here works at capacity; that is the moment for a takeaway cup from the tuk-tuk rather than a table. Weekday mornings belong to residents and are the best window for a conversation or a quiet hour of work.

Out of season the place shows its real character: an island café in winter, mostly locals, unhurried. Note that this is a daytime business rather than an evening one — the shop winds down in the afternoon and does not run late, so an evening plan should be built around the island’s restaurants instead. Check the schedule block on this page before setting out, especially in the colder months, when opening patterns on the island move with the season.

Getting there

Clipper sits on the island’s single main street, roughly in the middle of the run, in the Bronx neighborhood of City Island — a fishing-and-boatbuilding village of clapboard houses in Long Island Sound, joined to the mainland by one bridge from Pelham Bay Park. The island’s shipyards once built and rigged racing yachts, including America’s Cup defenders, which is the context a name like Clipper sits in.

Without a car the route is fixed and simple: take the 6 line to its last stop at Pelham Bay Park, then the local bus across the bridge and down the island. It is a longer trip than most Bronx destinations and it is worth doing as a half-day rather than an errand. Drivers get street parking that is easy in winter and painful on a summer Sunday, when the whole city seems to have had the same idea about seafood by the water.

Good to know

This is a small independent café on an island, and its virtues and limits both come from that. You get owner-level attention, coffee roasted by the same business that serves it, a room built for staying rather than for turnover, and an unusually good setup for families. You also get a room that is genuinely small, a seasonal rhythm that can make a July weekend chaotic, and a daytime-only schedule.

Two practical notes. First, the details laptop workers care about — outlets, Wi-Fi, tolerance for long stays — are not published, so ask rather than assume, particularly in high season. Second, the café’s own website domain no longer resolves to the business and now redirects elsewhere, so ignore whatever a stale link turns up; the roasting company’s site and the shop’s social pages are where current information actually lives.

Questions and answers

Do they roast their own coffee?

Yes, since 2022, under the Bronx Roasting Company name. Before that the house bought from an outside specialty roaster. The roasting machine is an all-electric, ventless, zero-emission Bellwether rather than a conventional gas drum.

Where do the beans come from?

Principally from a farm near Arbeláez in Colombia, owned by friends of the founder, farmed biodynamically and certified fair trade and organic. It is a direct relationship rather than an anonymous broker purchase.

Who opened it and when?

Peter Gennari, a City Island resident and former finance professional, opened the café in September 2018 after moving to the island four years earlier and finding it had nowhere to sit with a coffee.

Is it suitable for children?

Unusually so. The back room has a play area and a shelf of secondhand books, which is a deliberate choice by a founder with a young family and makes this one of the few cafés in the borough where a parent can actually finish a cup.

Can I work here with a laptop?

On a weekday or out of season, comfortably. On a summer weekend the room is too small and too full for it. Nothing is published about outlets or Wi-Fi terms, so ask at the counter before planning a long session.

What is the tuk-tuk outside?

A converted two-seat scooter-taxi fitted with a La Marzocco espresso machine, used as a mobile bar and usually parked by the shop. On a busy island afternoon it is often the faster way to get a cup.

Is there food?

Baked goods to go with the coffee, plus cold drinks, juices and teas. There is no full kitchen and no brunch service; the island’s restaurants cover that.

How hard is it to get to without a car?

Straightforward but not quick: the 6 line to its terminus at Pelham Bay Park, then a local bus over the bridge. Plan it as an afternoon on the island rather than a coffee stop between errands.

Opening hours