Slow mornings,
strong coffee, good records.
A coffee shop and roastery on South Congress Avenue in Austin, where the beans are small-batch, the mugs are heavy, and the turntable never stops at side B.
Walk in and find a seat. Open until 7:00p today.
4.9 / 5
from 1,280 neighbors
Open 6:30a
till the sun quits
Three sides of the record
Everything is made to order, priced plainly, and served in a mug heavy enough to feel like it means it.
Espresso
Pulled on a machine that has outlived three owners, dialed in twice a day, every day.
Cortado
Two ounces, no hiding
Brown Sugar Latte
House syrup, cinnamon dust
Dirty Chai
Masala chai + double shot
Affogato
Vanilla bean, drowned
Filter & Cold
Slower drinks for slower mornings. The cold brew steeps overnight in the walk-in out back.
Cardamom Cold Brew
18-hour steep, lightly spiced
Chemex for Two
Rotating single origin
Pecan Horchata
Cold brew, oat, toasted pecan
Iced Mint Mocha
Dark chocolate, fresh mint
From the Oven
Baked before sunrise in the kitchen behind the roaster. When it is gone, it is gone.
Pecan Sticky Roll
Baked at 5am, gone by 10
Green Chile Kolache
Texas by way of Prague
Buttermilk Biscuit
Honey butter, flaky edges
Olive Oil Cake
Orange zest, sea salt
A place to stay awhile
Nobody here is going to clear your cup to turn the table. Come for twenty minutes or stay until the light goes orange — the room is built for either one.
Talk
Deep booths and a long communal table. Built for the kind of conversation that loses track of time.
Booths seat 6
Read
The window corner gets morning sun, a soft chair and a shelf of paperbacks nobody keeps track of.
Take one, leave one
Work
Quiet tables with outlets and good light. Laptops welcome until 2pm, then we let the room breathe.
Laptops till 2pm
Meet
The patio out back holds forty, string lights after dark, and your dog is already on the list.
Patio seats 40
A South Congress coffee shop since 1974.
The Retro has been roasting and pouring on the same block of South Congress Avenue in Austin for fifty-two years. We kept the original terrazzo floor and the burnt-orange booths from the day the doors opened.
Beans are roasted on site in small batches and we can name the farm behind every bag on the shelf.
52
years on the same corner of South Congress
I never feel rushed here, and that is rarer than it should be.
Marcy D. · Regular since 2011
That cardamom cold brew rewired my whole summer.
Devon R. · Patio loyalist
Came for coffee, stayed four hours, left with a record.
Priya S. · First-timer
Shot by the regulars
Tag us and you might land on this wall. These all came from guests who stuck around long enough to take a picture.
