Rising Star Coffee Roasters — Restaurant in Cleveland Heights

Relocation of the prior CWRU adjacent store - many of the photos are outdated! Fortunately, the relocation to Lee Rd is every bit as quirky and charming as you'd expect a Rising Star to be. With any Rising Star, you'll get quality coffee, beans, merch, and baked goodies for sale. Most of their pastries are sourced from Blackbird Baking Co in Lakewood with plenty of gluten-free options, bagels from The Cleveland Bagel Co, and Rising Stars have all stopped charging extra for dairy alternatives!

Housed in a retro-themed diner which is once-again open for dine-in (or study-in), this cafe is polished, clean, and friendly. The barista bar is right in front when you enter, with restrooms to the right and the seating area to the left. Because of the oblong shape of the diner trailer, seating seems a little diminished from the prior space, but the dining tables make for ample surface to chat and work from, and the long dining counter has additional bar stools to park your butt at. The most unique seat is a dining table in an alcove jutting out from the side of the main dining room, with a bookshelf of free books to peruse. You'll find plenty of students studying here so you know the Wi-Fi is reliable. There are limited charging outlets due to the design of the trailer though - plan accordingly.

The bathrooms are subtly designated male and female with posters on the doors and kept in good condition. There's no paper towels, forcing you to go green with the excellent Dyson...

I realize they serve dinner beginning at 5 and the coffee shop technically stops at that point. But they really need to re-examine how they makes patrons aware of this. OR, they just need to bite the bullet and let people stay, because their current protocol is really bad.

I was meeting a friend for coffee at 4:30 yesterday and having a nice time, and then an employee comes over and says something to the effect of, "Excuse, we begin serving dinner at 5 so we will have to ask you to leave" and then she walks off. She didn't have an attitude or anything, but she wasn't particularly friendly, either. No matter how you cut it, it's just bad service to walk up to patrons and tell them to leave. Especially considering there was only two other people in the whole cafe. I could understand more if scores of people were waiting in line for dinner, but that wasn't the case. It just left a bad taste...

This is one of the coolest coffeeshops I've been to merely for the fact that it's in an old diner with what feels like lots of original decor cleanly preserved. The stainless aesthetic definitely feels like it's from a different era, in a good way. It's Rising Star coffee, which I always enjoy, but the staff here prepare things well which is the important part. I've never had anything less than warm interactions with the staff, although I'm a bit biased because we're regulars at this point. The interior seems to have been patterned after the dining car on a train, too, which is an added bonus for me as a train nerd. Abundance Culinary is currently running out of the kitchen here as well, so I recommend trying the buns if you need a quick lunch. An asset to the neighborhood, we're there pretty much...