Yafa Cafe

Yemeni coffee at a Sunset Park counter

Yafa takes its name from a coffee-growing region of Yemen, and that is the shortest explanation of what the counter is doing in Sunset Park. It works as a specialty coffee house with a Yemeni identity rather than a generic neighbourhood café: the coffee is the subject, and the room is built to hold people around it. Service is at the counter, the feel is modern and warm, and the crowd is local.

A community room more than a coffee bar

What distinguishes it is how it gets used. It reads as a community space with a coffee counter attached, somewhere people sit for long stretches, meet, and treat the room as an extension of the neighbourhood rather than a transaction point.

Sunset Park is the right setting for that. Fourth Avenue is a working, mixed part of Brooklyn without much specialty coffee, so a café that takes the coffee seriously and keeps the door open through the day fills a gap rather than following a trend.

What to order

Order coffee, and ask what is being poured. The specialty focus is the whole reason to make the stop, and the Yemeni connection is what separates it from every other well-run espresso bar in Brooklyn.

It is a daytime room, so treat it as a morning or afternoon stop rather than an evening one. Eater listed it in its 2025 coffee guide, which is a fair summary of the position it holds: a serious coffee counter that people actually use as a place to be.