The Carroll Gardens storefront that spent three years serving steaks, chops, and a beloved Sunday roast as Gus's Chop House is about to become something entirely different: a light-filled coffee house where laptops are discouraged and the espresso is sourced with the seriousness of a wine list. Café Wands is set to open November 1 at 215 Union Street, the same address where Gus's closed its doors late last year.
The new café is the creation of Justin Wands, a former opera singer turned restaurateur who is also a partner in Chez Fifi, the exclusive French bistro that opened in a 1920s townhouse on Manhattan's Upper East Side, according to The Strong Buzz. Wands has previously worked at The Nomad and with Thomas Keller, and he says he envisions Café Wands as a culinary destination for reading, talking, and connecting rather than a place to grind out a workday. He spent hundreds of hours studying coffee beans and roasters, drawing inspiration from coffee houses in Vienna, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Paris as he built out the concept.
That research shows up most clearly in the café's stance on laptops: they're discouraged, full stop. Wands has said he wants people to stay awhile, and the café is explicitly not being positioned as a workspace. The approach tracks with a broader trend among New York City coffee shops working to preserve a traditional third-place atmosphere and free up seating that often gets tied up by remote workers camping out on a single drink, per the same outlet.
A Coffee Program Built Like a Tasting Menu
Running the beverage side is Rohith Ram, Café Wands' coffee director, whom the café describes as a trained neuroscientist and former medical student. Ram will oversee rotating single-origin espressos, pour-overs, and a house-blended espresso, all built exclusively on light-roast beans. Wands has said the light-roast approach is intentional, arguing it expresses the taste of the bean itself more than the flavor of the roast.
Ram also plans to host a reservation-only coffee tasting experience focused on quality, traceability, and seasonality, featuring beans sourced from leading producers around the world. Beyond straight coffee, he's developing Ro's Chai, made from his own nine-spice family recipe, a coffee soda described as a non-alcoholic, low-caffeine drink, and single-cultivar Japanese ceremonial matcha. Iced coffee at Café Wands will be flash-brewed rather than cold-brewed, a method that involves hot-brewing coffee directly over ice or rapidly chilling it to service temperature to preserve the floral and fruit aromatics that can fade during long room-temperature cold brewing.
Baking In-House Under a Catskills-Trained Chef
Food falls to chef Grayson Brower, who will handle all baking in-house. Brower previously served as culinary director at Seminary Hill Orchard & Cidery, an organic cidery and Michelin-Key boutique hotel in Callicoon, New York. The café's pastry case is expected to include seasonal tarts, cakes, laminated pastries, buckwheat choux buns, gooey butter cake, and a fig newton, alongside a house PB&J and a goutier available after 2 p.m. Breakfast sandwiches will be built on homemade brioche or English muffin, with options like bacon, scrambled eggs, local gruyere, and tomato jam.
From Dark Chophouse to Light-Filled Third Place
The physical transformation is just as dramatic as the menu overhaul. Wands is renovating the space down to the studs, converting what was a dark chophouse into a light-filled third place meant to feel like a gathering spot rather than a restaurant. The redesign is being handled by architect Richard Lewis, whose past work includes Balthazar, Pastis, Via Carota, Bar Pisellino, Minetta Tavern, Augustine, and Xocomoco. When finished, the café will feature Miles Davis on the stereo, a fireplace, and candles, with an emphasis on what Wands calls gracious hospitality. He has also said Café Wands will eventually add an evening wine and cocktail program, extending the space's hours beyond daytime coffee service.
The address carries its own layered dining history in Carroll Gardens. Before Gus's Chop House arrived, 215 Union Street spent eight years as home to La Cigogne, an Alsatian French bistro that closed in 2022 after its owner stepped down following 16 years in the food service industry. Chris McDade and James O'Brien, who had built a local following since 2017 with their Italian-Southern restaurant Popina on nearby Columbia Street, then opened Gus's Chop House at the address in August 2022 as a casual European-style neighborhood chophouse named for McDade's son. It closed for good last year after three years of serving the neighborhood.
Wands' own résumé points to a different kind of ambition than a corner coffee shop. At Chez Fifi, which was launched by the team behind Michelin-starred Sushi Noz, the bi-level Upper East Side venue features a 12-table ground-floor dining room and an upstairs cocktail lounge called Salon de Fifi l'Étage, according to SevenRooms. Whether that level of polish translates into a laptop-free Carroll Gardens café that locals embrace, or one that feels out of step with the neighborhood's casual dining habits, remains to be seen once Café Wands opens its doors in November.
