Church Café Wine Bar Closes, Will Reopen As Church Bar This Week

Big changes are happening at the Church Café Wine Bar (416 Church Avenue, between E. 4th and E. 5th Streets) this week — the restaurant will close today and tomorrow for some renovation work and will reopen as a bar later this week!

The new spot will be named Church Bar, and neighbors are invited to celebrate its debut at its soft opening on Thursday, June 25 at 5pm, said the bar’s co-owner, neighbor Irma Pulido, who also ran the Church Café Wine Bar.

In addition to a wide variety of drinks, the new bar will offer a small tapas menu with bar food, Irma let us know. For all of you who have been fans of Church Café Wine Bar’s art openings and live music, there’s good news — the bar will be keeping those, and they’ll also be showing sports games, hosting karaoke and open mic nights, and more.

And, speaking of art shows, the bar will hold an art opening the day before its grand debut, on Wednesday, June 24 at 4pm. The show will feature two artists: Judy Kamilar and Nancy Miller.

Judy, a neighbor from Kensington, graduated from the School of Visual Arts and was involved in the East Village art movement of the 1980s. Her work is “an exploration into the human condition” that fuses “randomness with control, Dadaism and minimalism along with graphic design and Asian calligraphy,” according to an artist statement.

Nancy Miler is a painter, printmaker and teacher based in Manhattan and Long Island City, Queens. She graduated from Barnard College, studied art at the Art Students League and Provincetown Workshop, and received an MFA in Printmaking from the City College of New York.

Her expressionist paintings “incorporate traditional landscape and figurative painting, held together by elements of historical iconography,” her artist statement said.

To find out more about Church Bar, you can follow the new spot on Facebook — and, of course, check them out at their soft opening!