If you want to order the most unconventional, unexpected drink at an espresso bar, ask for an espresso. Not many do. Americans might drink espresso drinks, but we rarely drink straight espresso - usually that 1.5-ounce shot of coffee is just the ballast that anchors the 4, or 7, or 18 ounces of steamed milk that tops up the rest of the cup. In an anecdotal survey of the owners of a dozen of my favorite coffee spots in New York, shops with gifted baristas and finely tuned machines, most report that straight espresso accounts for maybe 5 percent of the coffees they sell. Who is in that 5 percent? Mike White, for one. White is the pundit behind My Daily Coffee, a Tumblr that chronicles his life in espressos. The postings stick to one unblinking format, an overhead snapshot of a just-finished espresso, with a short comment underneath, which, taken together, form an increasingly comprehensive (if highly subjective) portrait of the coffee scene in New York. A few out-of-town espressos are thrown into the mix now and then. White might be a biased observer - he worked at Gimme! Coffee, sometimes works at Joe and is a part of Coffee Common - but the opinions are sincere, the criticisms sharp, the humor bone dry. Though you can't tell from the photos, White is also documenting the decline and fall of the so-called New York shot, a dense, syrupy style of espresso that took hold a few years ago. It's what you get when you updose (by packing the filter basket with enough coffee for two to three shots) and pull the espresso short (by using a fine grind and stopping the water before one full ounce drips into the cup). The shots are brutes. Although I'm not sure if it's it's because of machismo as much as the unchecked enthusiasm of a city figuring out coffee, the whole scene acting a lot like a teenager after a growth spurt: it doesn't know its own strength. It turns out that was a phase. Today, espressos are still updosed (although not as much), but usually pulled longer; the extra time and additional water give the flavors room to develop and unfold so that the shots have more sweetness, more cream, more fruit. There's more clarity. And today there's more variety throughout the city. Part of the sport of drinking espresso is appreciating the different interpretations you find at coffee shops worth the detour: Bowery Coffee, on Houston Street just off the Bowery; Culture Espresso, two blocks from Bryant Park; Everyman Espresso, close to Union Square; Ports, across the street from the Chelsea Hotel; Sweetleaf, in Long Island City; or Third Rail, in the West Village. Sometimes, the composition of an espresso changes with the season. It's by design, the shifting flavors one of the defining characteristics of what you'll find at Café Grumpy, Joe and Ninth Street Espresso (which recently developed an entirely new espresso). Then there's the intramural diversity at Marlow & Sons, where the small coffee bar, pushed into a corner of the tastefully cluttered general store in front, has quietly become one of the most focused in New York. Right now, Marlow & Sons carries an all-star lineup of coffee roasters: Café Grumpy, Four Barrel, George Howell Coffee, Handsome Coffee Roasters. What's pulled on the espresso machine depends on when you go. When I was there last week, I caught the fade between George Howell's Konga Yirgacheffe, a single-origin espresso from Ethiopia, and Handsome's Fisticuffs, a blend of beans from Colombia and Honduras. It was a Thursday, so Stephen Rogers was on the bar. He's a kick to watch. Rogers started as a barista more than a decade ago, then roasted coffee at Intelligentsia Coffee and Tea and at Stumptown Coffee Roasters before moving to Arkansas to restore vintage roasting machines. He's in command of his craft, and can make an espresso sit, stay, beg and roll over. He began with a shot of the Konga Yirgacheffe that tasted like roasted almonds, then made a second that was like flowers and cocoa, and a third that was like Mast Brothers Chocolate. Next coffee: Fisticuffs, which he described with admiration as "aggressive." He made the Fisticuffs taste like lemon rind, then like lemon and honey, then he said he wanted it "softer," and made it taste like caramel pushed to its darkest limit and doused with cream. It was a good show, a parade of flavors and textures that could convert some of those in the 95 percent. Fisticuffs has since been replaced by Scout's Honor, a blend of Colombian and Rwandan coffees. It's a seasonal change. I'll be sure to check out what Rogers will do with it, if I don't see it on My Daily Coffee first.