Game cafe Queen & Rook grows at new location with retro arcade

Queen & Rook Game Cafe has opened its new location on South Street, literally a stone’s throw from its previous spot, with more event space and a retro video game arcade added to its already extensive board game collection. 

The space that previously housed Pietro’s Coal Oven Pizzeria now hosts three floors of indoor, outdoor and private event gaming space. The walls of the main ground floor hold shelves packed with over 2,000 board games. The games are sorted into categories like pop culture, party/trivia, and social deduction/bluffing. Beside the shelves are large, well-lit table and booth spaces to play, with return carts to clean games after use. Where there aren’t game shelves on the walls, there’s fine art prints from a wide range of regions and eras.

It’s a setting founder and co-owner Edward Garcia hopes invokes a similar overwhelming sense of options as the New York Public Library. 

“With that feeling we then take over and say, ‘Yes, this is like the magical library, but let us find you the right ones,’” Garcia said. “Our gamekeepers are fantastic at recommending and teaching games based on group size, interest and how much time you want to spend.”