Fans of ultra-trendy coffee shops and low-sugar bakeries (that is, all of us) are always recommending places like La Cabra and WatchHouse to each other. But hardly anyone knows the hidden gem of the coffee-and-pastry world called…
Gem Home is a café, home goods shop, and grocery store all in one space, located in Nolita, New York.
It’s a personal project by Flynn McGarry — a chef who landed on the cover of New York Times Magazine at 15, had a documentary made about him at 19, and by 26 had already opened and closed a fine-dining restaurant, launched a wine bar, a café-shop, and another restaurant, Cove, with an excellent wine list. For this, he’s affectionately called the “Justin Bieber of the culinary world.”
A café combined with a design shop is perhaps his coziest and most unexpected project. On one hand, it’s a family-style café with wooden tables, woven chairs, hanging tapestries, and dripping candles. The atmosphere feels somewhere between Scandinavian hygge and California casual, but definitely not New York.
On the other hand, it’s a shop filled with vintage and designer items that Flynn brings back from trips around the world. He literally travels with an extra suitcase, which he fills with finds from Mexico, Kyoto, Paris, and Copenhagen.
The result is a true magnet for connoisseurs: a place where you can have coffee with a cardamom bun, buy artisanal jam, and at the same time pick up a $1,400 copper bowl made from pasta (yes, that actually exists).
Overall, Gem Home falls into the category of “a place you stop by for 20 minutes and end up staying for an hour and a half.”
Visitor’s Information
📍 Gem Home / 181 Mott St, New York, NY 10012
Weekdays: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM