CROWN HEIGHTS — Get your coffee by day and your cocktails by night at Two Saints, a soon-to-open spot on Nostrand Avenue created by the owner of the popular Franklin Avenue coffee shop Little Zelda.
The new bar will open within the month at the corner of Nostrand Avenue and St. Johns Place, according to co-owner James Petrie. He is working on the project with Michael de Zayas, the owner of Little Zelda, nearby cheese shop Wedge and the salon Deck, located next door to Two Saints.
The idea for the new spot is to bring “the concept of Little Zelda” to Nostrand, said Two Saints’ manager Tamara Clarke, with the same coffee, pastries and feeling of a “really small, neighborhood spot.”
“The entire bar is about creating another community space,” she said inside the new location, which is being renovated from its previous tenant, a beauty salon.
The 80-seat bar will serve coffee and snacks from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., she said, with a “little crossover of coffee and bar” during happy hour, followed by only bar service until 2 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 4 a.m. on Thursdays and weekends.
Two Saints has conditional approval for a full liquor license from the State Liquor Authority and plans to serve 12 kinds of beers on draft and cocktails inspired by Caribbean dishes, Clarke said.
“We wanted it to be like a mashup of the European idea of a cafe, but we want to pay homage to the neighborhood,” she said.
The bar is one of several new businesses opening off Nostrand Avenue in early 2015.
A block north of Two Saints near Sterling Place, a father-and-son team plan to open Little Trini Cafe, a new Trinidadian doubles shop. At the corner of Bergen Street, two friends plan to turn an 870-foot, garage-like building into the new local watering hole. And a block west of that project, the owner of Crosby Coffee is working to open Elsie’s, a new doughnut shop, in January.
Two Saints is located at 753 Nostrand Ave. at the corner of St. Johns Place. Updates about the opening will be available on the bar’s website.
