Game Point at Bongo East sits in a category entirely its own. Nashville’s first and only board game cafe operates out of the East Nashville location of Bongo Java, at 107 S. 11th St, and the concept is exactly as it sounds: you order coffee, beer, wine, or kombucha from the counter, and then you play board games from a curated library of over 700 titles, all free to customers. The games range from modern strategy games to classics, and game coaches are available evenings to teach rules, settle disputes, or recommend titles based on what your group wants. The atmosphere on a weekend night sits somewhere between a library and a party.
The Bongo East cafe opened its roasting operation in East Nashville in 2000 when East Nashville was a different neighborhood entirely, before the galleries and the restaurants and the craft beer bars arrived. In 2018, the shop reinvented itself entirely by partnering with the founder of Tennessee Game Days to launch the board game cafe concept. What was already an unusual operation, a coffee roastery turned neighborhood cafe, became the kind of place you’d have difficulty explaining to someone from out of town without sounding like you were making it up.
Why This Counts as Unusual
Most coffee shops with unusual angles in Nashville lean heavily on aesthetics. Reclaimed wood, an anchor logo, vintage industrial equipment, motorcycles on display, a vinyl record setup built by custom audio engineers. These are distinctive but not genuinely unusual. A functional board game library in a working coffee shop where game coaches are on staff is a different kind of unusual. It changes the time horizon. You don’t go to Game Point for a 20-minute laptop session. You go for an evening.
The hours reflect this: Game Point stays open until 10 p.m. nightly, which is later than almost any independent coffee shop in Nashville. In a city where most cafes close at 4 or 5 p.m. and the evening options tilt heavily toward bars, this is not a small distinction.
The Coffee Side of Game Point
It runs on Bongo Java’s roasting program, which has been operating as a 100% organic, Fair Trade coffee company since the 1990s. In 1999, Bongo helped co-found Cooperative Coffees, a consortium that buys directly from small-scale farmer cooperatives. The coffee is solid without being a destination-worthy specialty operation. The appeal of Game Point is not the coffee as an end in itself. It’s the coffee as fuel for four hours of Catan.
Other East Nashville Honorable Mentions
Barista Parlor at 519 Gallatin Ave is often described as unusual because of its design, but it is more accurately described as extremely well-executed industrial aesthetics with serious coffee. The former transmission shop setting with motorcycles parked out front and handcrafted wooden counters is striking rather than unusual. It’s what every coffee shop that wants to seem interesting is trying to do, but done better than any other shop in the city does it.
Ugly Mugs at 1886 Eastland Ave is the neighborhood shop that East Nashville residents use habitually. Founded in 2008, it serves Retrograde Coffee and partners with Dozen Bakery for pastries. Its signature drinks have names like the Hoodie Latte (honey, cinnamon, vanilla) and are made with sweetened condensed milk options not common at other local shops. It is less unusual than it is genuinely beloved.
For pure conceptual strangeness combined with a functioning operation, nothing in East Nashville matches Game Point. It is not the best cup of coffee in the neighborhood. It is the most distinctive reason to be in a coffee shop at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Sources
- Bongo Java official history: https://www.bongojava.com/pages/history
- NashvilleLife.com on Bongo Java Game Point: https://nashvillelife.com/Bongo-Java/TN
- Wanderlight Moments on Game Point Bongo East: https://www.wanderlightmoments.com/the-6-best-coffee-shops-in-nashville/
- Peter’s Big Adventure Nashville coffee guide on Game Point: https://www.petersbigadventure.com/nashville-coffee-guide
- Ugly Mugs official site: https://www.uglymugsnashville.com/
- Barista Parlor history, Imbibe Magazine: https://imbibemagazine.com/inside-look-barista-parlor/
- Nashville Guru coffee shop guide: https://nashvilleguru.com/1577/nashville-coffeehouse-guide