A new cafe and art gallery, Art Collective Cafe, will be coming to Park Slope mid-May, owner Natalya Kolosok confirms.
The approximately 600-square-foot space on 97 7th Avenue will serve specialty coffee, as well as pastries made by chef Alexey Ivanov who has been working as a pastry chef in the city for over a decade. He will offer his customized cake services at the cafe, which will have about half-a-dozen tables and a bar. It will also display work from local artists that will be available to purchase.
“We hope that we can not only serve coffee and cookies, but also make custom pastries and showcase unique art,” Kolosok, who is also CEO of New York City Bride, says. “Many artists aren’t able to get their art in a gallery, so we want to give them a chance to showcase their work.”
The cafe will also sell cups and mugs, donating some of the proceeds to help Ukrainians, says Kolosok who emigrated from the country nearly two decades ago. She hopes to also sell wine at the cafe in the future.
In 2009 Ivanov emigrated from Russia to New York, working various odd jobs at restaurants pretty much ever since. He started as a dishwasher and busboy, but he longed to be in the kitchen and always loved desserts. He eventually got a job as a pastry sous chef, moving from Midtown’s TAO Downtown Restaurant to Soho’s Thai Diner and elsewhere, while also earning his AAS in Baking and Pastry at Monroe College in the Bronx.
He started designing custom cakes out of necessity when the pandemic hit. His Instagram posts caught the attention of the Food Network, who invited him to partake in their Halloween Baking Competition last year.
He says he is looking forward to finally running his own kitchen at the neighborhood’s new cafe.
“It’s hard to show what you can do when you always work under someone,” he says. “You don’t always have creative freedom in restaurants. I hope this place, our place, will give me the opportunity to offer something that I feel great about.”
