Step off the main, mixed drag of Boerum Hill’s Atlantic Avenue and you’ll find quiet rowhouses on some of the borough’s prettiest blocks. You’ll also find one of Brooklyn’s sweetest little hidden coffee treasures: Dot & Line.
A hand-built labor of love by mom-and-pop (literally—they just had a baby this spring) owners Amber Eltaieb and Bart Rozyk, Dot & Line brightens the corner of Bergen and Nevins streets, delivering quality brews with sweetness—and a lack of specialty attitude.
The pair wanted to deliver the kind of high-quality coffee experience they’d enjoyed in their travels, but with an authentically Brooklyn vibe—perhaps all the more scarce in an increasingly chain-dominated New York City (and even Boerum Hill itself.) “It was important to us to bring back part of the Brooklyn that heavily influenced our values growing up,” says Eltaieb. “The local neighborhood shop where they know your name and the people and families that make up the community.”
And it comes across. From the breezy small talk when ordering to the decor—where rustic wood and modern tile meet seemingly random objets d’art and kitschy, playful themes like Scrabble tiles and references to the store’s eponym, the children’s book by Norton Juster. Inside this cozy construction—all wrought by Eltaieb and Rozyk through “many hours of manual labor and splinters,” Eltaieb says—you’ll find a simple space to relax next to sunny windows, coffee in hand.
The coffee, available as espresso, batch-brewed filter coffee, or brewed to order French Press or Chemex, comes from Portland, Oregon’s Heart Roasters, whose progressive approach to roasting may not frequently land in the same kind of space that also offers Original New York Seltzer sodas along with Babyccinos. But that’s exactly why Dot & Line is who they are.
“We wanted to bring an elevated coffee experience to the area, but we wanted to make it approachable, friendly, familiar and welcoming,” says Eltaieb. “A high-end experience doesn’t always have to equate to a pretentious atmosphere.” And indeed, how could it, in a place as easygoing as this warm little corner.
