La Casita Coffee — Restaurant in Rowlett

For those of you who follow my google reviews, you know how rare my five star reviews are, but this place is as real as coffee shops get.

Pros: -Handmade drinks with handmade syrups and handmade pastries on the side. Have you ever had a homemade pop tart? I hadn't until I ate here, and guess what? It was great. Forget store pop tarts, I will never pop one of those pockets of empty calories into my mouth again. This place has great food and greatier drinks.

-Cozy atmosphere. It is, like all good coffee shops, tucked away in a corner to minimize noise, maximize focus, and limit the amount of losers that would sit there for hours hogging the wifi bandwidth for their Game of Thrones bingewatching which they could totally do at home. Come on, people! Coffee shops are for studying!

-Stylish vibe and gucci customer service. It isn't hard to style your store after the latest episode of 'Joanna Gaines and her cute but dorky husband', but it is hard to find something as simple as a foodservice establishment with customer service worth tipping. This place, however, has both. Shout out to the baristas and baristos that put up with grouchy customers with a smile and tactful repose. Everyone has to pay the bills somehow, but not everyone can do it while showing off such terrific people skills.

-Outdoor seating that is properly shaded and cooled. If you live in Texas, I don't need to tell you how hot it gets here, and how important it is to have properly shaded outdoor seating. I'ma be real with you, I get sweaty just drinking coffee or being outdoors, and much more so doing both. I appreciate the creativity it took to think of a decent place to put all of the posh people that don't need to study in your store, but rather want to get out and have a brunch with the broads over a cuppa joe and some delish chess pie. The rear outdoor seating is delightfully decorated and perfect for this.

-Insert more pros here that I want to type but I'm on mobile and my thumbs are tired and I gotta pace myself for the rest of the review.

Cons: -Not enough seating. I know this is contradictory, but I still want it. Maybe we can get more creative with seating, like, and I'ma eventually patent this totally original idea, but what if we built a double decker couch ? I think that would be a pretty dope idea. I mean, you should have a strict 'socks only' policy for the top deck, and maybe run it by your general liability insurer first, but I think it would be cool. Just saying. Oh, also, a hammock. I would like to sit in a hammock out doors next to the shaded area with a ledge nearby to put my coffee on or my laptop while it plays a video I use to study.

-It isn't cold enough. I want it to be colder. Ideally, I will have my laptop and notes on the bottom of the double decker couch, with a soft blanket while the heat of the outdoors is kept away by a surrounding atmosphere of a/c.

-The service is slow. I get that this isn't starbucks and you actually care about the product you put out and the people you serve, but I hungry now!

In conclusion: I am tired of typing. Support your local coffee shops! Starbs brought the masses decent coffee at a time when America was only familiar with instant coffee (because it was the first coffee we were massively consuming due to wartime necessities), but these indie coffee places are bringing us actually good coffee at a time when all you can get is folgers or barely coffee anymore at starbs.

So shout out to The Modern Well, for being worth everything I've ever spent there, including minutes of my short life.

I guess I wasn't as tired of typing...

Once upon a time, and not that long ago, the lion's share of my weekday's working hours was spent in the cafes of Shanghai, of which there are very many. Of all the cities in China to embrace the bean, the arms (and wallets) of Shanghai have been the most open. Proof of this is found in the sheer number of small independent cafes, the collosal Starbucks roastery at the corner of Ruijin and Nanjing West Roads, and the emergence of Luckin Coffee (Apollo Creed to Starbucks' Rocky). Dunkin'Donuts was even foolhardy enough to occupy (briefly) supremely expensive real estate directly across from JingAn Temple. (China does not and never will run on Dunkin'...or Tim Hortons.)

But if what I know about coffee qua coffee would scarcely fill a teaspoon, I know a thing or two about places that make and sell it. I've published thousands of words of reviews (bars, cafes, restaurants); and since I am more flaneur than connaiseur, let me at last get to the point.

Wee, wonderful Rowlett - and the big blue marble we call home - are better places for having establishments like Modern Well. Thank you, owners and investors and staff, for MWC.

Keep your purchases local whenever possible, and eschew that thieving mermaid from Seattle as best and and often as you can. Modern Well's coffee is just fine, and their baked goods are lovely. No palm d'ors or Michelin stars are forthcoming, I wager, and I pray the owners don't expand their operations or franchise. (Ambitions of scale slay business like Raid curbstomps cockroaches.) Modern Well is fine - perfect, in fact - just as they are.

Go. Buy. Enjoy. And do so because that charming little sliver of road running between the PGB and Rowlett Road would be much, much worse were there no MWC, or were the Well to go dry.

Giv'em love. Tip...

La Casita is a lovely little coffee shop off the beaten path in Rowlett, with outrageously delicious pastries. I ordered a cortado, 2 oz of espresso with 2 oz of steamed milk and it was possibly the best I've ever tasted. My daughter had the latte and chocolate croissant both equally divine. The only reason I did not give it 5 stars was we found their customer service to be quite arbitrary. There were pastries on a tray that were not in the front case. We asked about several and the woman who served us gave a brief description and said we could not buy them because they weren't in the front case. We accepted the answer and sat down. Two other customers came in after us and asked about the pastries on the tray, she gave a description and she asked if they wanted them and we watched as she sold them the pastries off the tray, as well as another customer who walked in behind them. We didn't say anything about it and as we were leaving I decided to purchase a loaf of gorgeous sourdough bread and English muffins. She rang up my purchase and charged me tax on both items. I said there must be a mistake there is no tax on bread or English muffins, other prepared pastries yes, but never bread. She then told me they came from a larger bakery and that is the reason why I was taxed. I paid for my breads and left. Will I go back maybe or I might just go to what she called the big bakery-La Casita...