A coffee house in the Netherlands is paying cross-Atlantic tribute to the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
While gentrification remains a hot-button topic in Brooklyn and other New York neighborhoods, owners of the “Bedford-Stuyvesant” coffee shop in the ethnically diverse east end of Amsterdam, are embracing it.
“What is happening in our neighborhood has a lot in common with what is currently happening in Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York,” coffee shop co-owner Caroline Bakker told Gothamist over the weekend.
The Dutch shop — the only place in Europe to get Brooklyn Roasting Co. beans — is adorned with a mural of brownstones, a large, rustic wood table and second-hand couches.
Bakker, 31, and partner Eugene van Dijk, 39, have visited New York several times and were taken by “the friendly atmosphere and service with a smile.”
But “Bedford-Stuyvesant” patron Hilke Heijmans, a 23-year-old student, wasn’t too impressed with the coffee house’s efforts to replicate the Kings County nabe.
“We might as well be in London right now. I simply don’t understand why they’re trying to recreate something that’s so specific to another city,” Heijmans said. “If they wouldn’t have advertised it as such, maybe I would be less critical about it.”