Don’t consider La Reunion in Oak Cliff a coffee shop, even though the shop’s general manager Ali Abderrahman was the most lauded barista in Texas after scoring high at the 2019 U.S. Barista Championship. La Reunion’s owner, Michael Mettendorf, has more than 10 years of experience launching indie coffee shops in Dallas and is a self-proclaimed coffee geek.

La Reunion in Bishop Arts in Dallas is a parlor serving coffee, cocktails, beer and food. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

La Reunion is a coffee shop, but Mettendorf wants it to have a more robust identity in its Bishop Arts digs. They prefer to call it a “parlor” — a place where there’s coffee, wine, beer, cocktails and a from-scratch food menu.

“We’re not a bar, a restaurant or a coffee shop,” Mettendorf says. “We’re all of the above and none at the same time.”

The shop was named for the utopian community La Réunion, formed near the banks of the Trinity River in the mid-1800s. Mettendorf liked the history and wanted his shop to have a tie to its Oak Cliff community.

“We wanted to be reverent to the neighborhood,” he says.

Every piece of artwork on the back wall at La Reunion was a gift. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The coffee roaster on display in the corner of La Reunion is “one of the most expensive things I own,” says Michael Mettendorf. It and the Modbar AV espresso machine — which Mettendorf believes is the only one in Texas — are two essential parts of the shop. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The shop is a delightfully comfortable room, where the operator’s geekery over craft beer, food and coffee is obvious only if you ask. Those who want to gawk at the very expensive coffee roaster are welcome to — but plenty of other patrons seemed content to keep their heads turned to their computers while they used the free wifi.

Their policy is to stay open “as late as there are people here,” Mettendorf says, and that means they close between 10 p.m. and midnight on weekdays, 2 a.m. on weekends.

The menu is a compact, interesting smattering of breakfast, lunch or dinner snacks. The most popular breakfast bite is the $9 croque madame. At lunch and dinner, customers often order the $13 pressed chicken sandwich: sous vide chicken thigh served on a ciabatta with mayo, gruyere and greens.

“If we can’t make it from scratch, we won’t do it” is the company’s motto. Executive chef Matt Smith, working in a tiny kitchen behind the bar, was making his own garlic oil during a recent visit.

Other popular menu items are a bowl of mussels and a charcuterie board.

Croque madame, a breakfast sandwich with ham and gruyere on sourdough topped with a béchamel and a poached egg, is one of the items on the breakfast menu. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Although La Reunion is one of three coffee shops at the intersection of N. Bishop Avenue and Melba Street in the Bishop Arts District, Mettendorf says an influx of indie coffee shops isn’t a bad thing for Dallas. Besides, La Reunion isn’t a straight-ahead coffee shop, remember?

“Coffee shops are blowing up everywhere in Dallas,” he says. “It’s a good problem to have. ... [But] we think we’re very avant garde for a coffee shop.”

La Reunion opened in October 2019 and is located at 229 N. Bishop Ave., Dallas.

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