This West 72nd Street café is a fabulous language lab—one of the best free local resources I have found for any language I’ve studied so far during this project. I went there a lot while I was studying Hebrew.

Technically it is not free, I suppose, because if you showed up every day without buying at least a coffee, they might not like it.

This Aroma is actually part of a major Israeli-based espresso bar chain that also has overseas venues. There are three others in New York City—on 145 Greene Street in SoHo, 205 East 42nd Street in Midtown, and 100 Church Street in Tribeca.

I haven’t been to any besides the Upper West Side location, but I can tell you, if you want to hear a lot of Hebrew, that one is a great place to go. It has many Israeli patrons, including numerous regulars. It is rare for me to walk in there without hearing at least some Hebrew.

The owner, a friendly guy, is Israeli himself and can often be found there. He once told me (this was in 2011) that he thought about 20 percent of his customers were Israeli, climbing to maybe 30 percent on weekends!

Studying Hebrew at Aroma, I didn’t have to spend one second frustrated or confused. There was always someone around to answer language questions. Not just employees, but also customers, which was ideal, because I wouldn’t have felt good about bugging people who were behind a counter trying to make a living—in a very expensive city, by the way—for what were essentially free tutoring services.

Aroma’s most conspicuous morning deliveries consist of huge piles of vegetables; they have a lot of healthy food.

Visit their website for a list of Aroma restaurants in the U.S.