Central Avenue Update Part 6: Cosmic Coffee to Corner Coffee
The Churn for Friday, January 24, 2025
With this installment of the Central Avenue Update, we bring our revisiting of the street to its conclusion - 30 more spots visited, another great urban culinary thoroughfare documented for the modern era. The Checklist doesn’t end here, however - stay tuned for another epic voyage along University Avenue as we head back to the Green Line.
Three coffee shops and gas station tacos. No, that’s not the title of the new Lana Del Rey album. It's a rundown of the places we visited on a recent Saturday morning Checklist outing. The differing experiences in the coffee shops alone were enough to cause us whiplash, but it was our visit to the gas station c-store home of Hermanos Locos Tacos that left us in need of a neck brace. There is so much beauty in chaos. – M.C. Cronin
PEACE MARKET | 923 45th Ave. NE, Hilltop, Minn. | 763.205.6655
After dropping into Peace Market on a whim many months ago at the start of our Central Ave revisit, we discovered they planned on offering food from a deli counter in the back of the store. We love a deli counter discovery, so we resigned ourselves to stopping in again.
On this outing, we arrived too early in the day. We were told by the friendly store owner that the food would come out a bit later. But when later came, we returned only to find the deli cases still empty.
We’re a resilient and dedicated crew, but after being rebuffed a third time, it felt like a sign from the universe. You can’t say we didn’t try. – M.C.
COSMIC COFFEE | 3301 Central Avenue NE | 651.387.2675
“Cosmic operates using a unique one-person model. This means your experience will be different here than at other coffee shops.”
So begins the unusually frank list of “Cosmic Quirks” that govern your time here. To name a few: there’s a four-drink limit, and no drink carrier will be provided; you can order food, but there will be substitutions; drinks will be made one at a time upon ordering; and the doors lock at noon on weekdays so Dusty can shop and prepare for the next day.
In case it isn’t abundantly clear, Dusty isn’t running a Starbucks here.
Other sure signs this is an independent shop: there’s a DVD watching station, a small gift “section” with a random smattering of clothing, jewelry, prints, and other wares made by local artists, and a handwritten sign—almost certainly by Dusty’s hand— requesting you to bus and wipe down your own table using the sanitizer and paper towels provided.
When you come to Cosmic Coffee, you’re making a conscious choice—a refreshingly clear one—about who your money supports. You’re not feeding some faceless corporate beast. You’re feeding Dusty, quirks and all. – M.C.
At Cosmic Coffee, don't expect culinary greatness, but don't expect to pay all that much, either - whatever the place's shortcomings may be, they don't bill you for anything you're not getting on the plate or in the cup.
Take the breakfast-y Boss Burrito ($7), for example. It's mostly scrambled eggs, and ours came fairly cold in the center, a likely consequence of insufficient microwaving. But the eggs were light and pleasant, and any burrito under $10 around here deserves a bit of grace.
Our Mocha ($6 for 16 oz.) was generic in the extreme - its coffee flavor was retiring, and we might have confused it for an undersweetened and mediocre hot chocolate, except we also ordered Hot Chocolate ($3), which was slightly sweeter and more chocolatey than the mocha. Neither were real remarkable, nor were they offensive.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Heavy Table to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.