Che

A Bed-Stuy room that runs from coffee to wine

Che is small: one intimate room on Malcolm X Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York, with tables, a few seats at the bar and some chairs outside. It works as a coffee and brunch stop by day and a wine bar in the evening, and the shift between those two jobs is the most useful thing to know before going. The seating mix is the tell: tables for a full meal, a bar for a drink on your own, and a few chairs outside when the weather allows.

Service does a lot of the work. The house pours a weekly wine selection and will let you taste before committing, which turns choosing a glass into a conversation rather than a guess, and recommendations are offered rather than waited for. Che appears in the Infatuation's 2026 coffee guide.

Wine leads after dark

The drinks list is strongest on the wine side. A skin contact wine is the order that best explains the room's leanings, textural and pointed away from a conventional by-the-glass list, and the weekly rotation means the specifics change often enough to be worth asking about rather than assuming.

Cocktails are there too, with the Jungle Bird the named one, bitter and tropical at the same time. Between the weekly pours, the skin contact bottle and one good cocktail, the evening version of Che has more to say than most cafés that stay open past the afternoon, and the small room makes it feel like a local's decision rather than a destination.

Order the sardines, then the blondie

Food is short and specific rather than a long menu. Sardines on sourdough are the plate to order first: crunchy bread, smooth ricotta, and olive oil doing more than expected. Tuna crudo sits alongside them, which tells you the kitchen is comfortable with raw fish and small plates rather than café standards alone.

By day the egg sandwich is the anchor and the reason people come in before work. For something sweet, the pistachio blondie with mango caramel is the named pastry, and it happens to be gluten free. Ordered together, those dishes describe the place better than any category does: morning food, seafood plates, wine-friendly snacks and one dessert, in a room that does not need a long menu to be worth a table.