Just Another Café Is a Cheery Bodega-Inspired Locale and Wine Bar

Bodegas have long been epicentres of city neighbourhoods in North America, offering household essentials, no-frills sandwiches, and sometimes a friendly greeting from a shop cat. Though you never quite know what awaits in the cramped aisles, there is something familiar and approachable in all of them that harkens back to days when consumer choices weren’t quite so overwhelming and a computer screen didn’t separate customer and seller.

It was this spirit of bodegas—the oft-underestimated powerhouse that tirelessly anticipates the last-minute and late-night needs of its community—that was the inspiration behind Just Another, a Vancouver café by day, wine bar by night designed by Studio Roslyn.

The 1,400-square-foot space transitions from morning coffees to afternoon cocktails to after-dark bottles of wine, as well as offering a curated retail section, establishing the café as a full-time permanent member of the community rather than a day or nighttime visitor. Studio Roslyn created a cheery and playful space with floral textiles, locally sourced wood, and multiple types of tiles to welcome passersby no matter the time of day.

The Vancouver-based interior design and consulting studio was founded in 2017 by two University of Manitoba architecture friends, Jessica MacDonald and Kate Snyder, with the idea that their creativity should not be limited to the confines of design but rather extend across mediums from art to architecture to fashion. They bring this imaginative approach to Just Another.

Atop straight-stacked dark grey tiles, joyful yellow-and-white-checkered tabletops recall 1950s picnics, while forest-green metal-and-wood chairs alongside chartreuse-tweed benches with wood bases create a retro and charmingly mismatched dining room. Overhead hang three large fringed floral-and-orange parasols, making the high ceilings feel more intimate and diffusing the kitchen noise. Alongside the large windows, a casual seating area contains two low-slung wood chairs and an armless sofa, set apart with a blue and grey rug.

Off the main dining area, a narrow room opens up to the outdoors with roll-up floor-to-ceiling windows, string lights woven into latticework on the ceiling adding to the patio effect. Olive-green tables extend up the wall to become shelves lined with local products and ceramics against a peach wall and cream tiles.

Extending from the other side of the dining room, high stools in light wood pull up to counters abutting the window, adjacent wall, and coffee bar. A wood island with robin’s egg blue panels and curved edges laden with pastries and baked goods separates guests from staff. Framed with hanging vines, the back wall behind the counter supports matching blue-and-wood shelves stacked with aesthetically pleasing products. The variety of seating—standard-height tables, a lounge table, high counter seating, and stools—presents options for a diverse clientele, from families to remote workers to first dates.

At night, the lamps are dimmed, and light shimmers against Just Another’s abundance of tiles, textiles, and patterns, capturing a casual comfort akin to relaxing in the kitchen after dinner. It’s hospitality at its most welcoming—the kind that just gets better each time you come back.

Photography by Conrad Brown.