Whisk Cafe, the Ditmas Park java joint shuttered after murdered owner Josh Rubin disappeared, is set to percolate again — as a brand new coffee house.
Yasser “Max” Habib, owner of the popular Qathra Cafe on Cortelyou Road, wants to expand the coffee bean experience in a neighborhood still reeling over Rubin’s grisly slaying.
“Josh was a good guy, and it was a good place, but we’d like to make it our own,” said Habib, who is moving forward with negotiations to lease the space.
The entrepreneur sidestepped Whisk’s ghosts by passing up on Rubin’s espresso machine and grinder that were sold off last weekend during an estate sale at the cafe advertised by Rubin’s family on the Ditmas Park Blog, but said the joe shop would be a boon for the area.
“There are no cafes down there and a lot of my customers are desperate to have another location to have good coffee,” Habib said.
The airy space on Westminster Road between Newkirk and Ditmas avenues has the potential to become a thriving enterprise because of the confluence of foot traffic from a nearby co-op, an elementary school across the way, and the street, added Habib, who told the blog Brokelyn that he was “75 percent sure” that the space would be his.
Those pluses didn’t help Rubin, who toiled around the clock to try and scrape together enough dough for his first rent payment on Nov. 1 — the morning his burned and shot body was www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/34/52/web_joshrubinhomicide_2011_12_30_bk.html“>found off a rural road in Pennsylvania.
Habib is looking to model his new venture after a time-honored recipe — if all goes as planned.
“You get good beans and some people who know how to make good coffee, and you’re going to have some business!” he said.
Reach reporter Eli Rosenberg at erosenberg@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2531. And follow him at twitter.com/emrosenberg.
