Really good bread, soft French butter and Russian caviar on ice. That’s the offering at Coffee & Caviar, a daytime tenant of Farra Wine Bar on Worth. I can tell you it is a total treat, and even if you don’t do caviar, go for a pastry and a pistachio latte and sit in the window.

Farra, as you may recall, opened on March 12, 2020, as the wine bar and restauant attached to Atera, the two-Michelin-star tasting menu in the basement next door. And Dasha Smyslov has been the caviar distributor for the restaurant since then. Earlier this year, one of the owners suggested Dasha rent the space during the day, while Farra is dark. So she found a way to fit in a commercial coffee machine (on a cart with casters), hung signs in the window that she removes each afternoon, and started sourcing baked goods (more on that below). They opened two weeks ago.

She also added some Russian touches: sheepskins cover the wood chairs, caviar tins serve as decor on the tables. It’s a charming jewel-box of a space — about 20 seats — and pleasantly unfussy.

Sure, it’s caviar, but the service is as low-key as you get. It’s meant to be, in a way, country. (The caviar breakfast for two is $64.79; a latte is $7.25.)

“I’m Russian and in Russia we have caviar sandwiches for breakfast,” Dasha said. “And I thought coffee and caviar — simple. I wanted to bring that to Tribeca.”

Dasha immigrated here with her mother at age 7 (she’s now 45). As a single mother of two living in Brooklyn, she spent 10 years reselling high-end clothing on eBay. “It was a great business for raising my kids, but I had no external interaction,” she said. So when a friend started importing caviar for the Russian market in Brooklyn, she took up the Manhattan side of the business. But it was her husband, Anthony Napolitano, who planted the seed of a coffee shop. And even though he works the night shift as a construction superintendent for infrastructure projects, you might find him pouring lattes first thing.

“Tribeca is still neighborhood-y, where so many other places have become commercial,” Anthony said. “Everyone kind of knows everybody.”

Their pastries and breads are from Le Fournil, another husband-and-wife team with a French bakery in the East Village which has already garnered some attention. The butter comes in little foil packages, served room temp. The single origin organic coffee is from Batch, a family-owned roaster out of Binghamton. (No one else carries them in the city.)

Also, nothing on our table was disposable, except maybe the paper liner on the tray. What a relief.

Dasha and Anthony do hope to grow the business slowly, though neither is quitting their day jobs. For now.

Coffee & Caviar
71 Worth | Church & Broadway
Monday to Friday, 8a to 2p
Saturday & Sunday, 8:30a to 2