Strangelove Is a Coffee Shop Until It Isn't: East Austin's Best Day-to-Night Room

The building at 2614 E Cesar Chavez does not look like a business. It looks like a house, because it was one: a white 1920s bungalow with a porch, a wall of hanging plants, and a yucca planted directly in your sightline. The only signage is the word Strangelove in black script tacked to the gable. Show up on a weekday morning and it is a coffee shop. Come back after dark and the same room is pouring Lambrusco by the glass. That is the entire concept, and the reason it works is that neither half is the afterthought.

We went for coffee, on a weekday, mid-morning. The espresso program is Figure 8, which is the tell that the coffee is not a courtesy: this is a wine bar built by people who took the 7am shift seriously. The house came from the team behind the cocktail bar Small Victory, who opened it in May 2025 in the bungalow that Austin knew for years as Friends & Neighbors.

An iced latte with oat milk is $6.75 out the door. That is the number that made us stay.

The Room Does the Work

Inside is wood-paneled walls, bright blue built-ins holding bottles, vintage cafe tables, and enough plants to make the light green. There is a reading-nook quality to the front rooms that most Austin coffee shops gave up on around 2019, when everything went to concrete and butcher paper. The back patio is the other half of the property: shaded in the morning, string lights in the evening, and the reason people stay for three hours instead of one.

It is also, quietly, one of the better places on the east side to work. There is wifi, there are outlets, and it stays low-volume during the day. The house asks that the wifi, the seating and the bathrooms are for customers, which is fair, and it is the kind of place where buying a second drink is not a hardship.

The Coffee Is Priced Like a Neighborhood Cafe

The board is short and classic, no novelty names, no 14-ingredient specials. Espresso is $4 with a choice of the house blend or a single origin. An americano is $4.25, a macchiato and a cortado are $4.75 each, a cappuccino is $5.25, and a latte is $5.75. Drip is $4 and iced coffee is $5. Almond or oat is $1, and syrups (honey, lavender, vanilla, chocolate) are $1.

The matcha latte is $6 and the house-brewed chai is $6, which is the one to order if you want to know whether a place is actually making things in house. Tea is a real list rather than a box of bags: earl grey, English breakfast, green, herbal peppermint and mandarin rooibos at $4.50 hot, or black, hibiscus and tropical green at $4 cold.

• Latte — $5.75 — Figure 8 espresso. Add oat or almond for $1. The default order, and it holds up iced.
• Cortado — $4.75 — The value pick if you want to actually taste the espresso. Same price as the macchiato.
• House Brewed Chai — $6 — Brewed in house, not pumped from a carton. The tell that the daytime menu is real.
• Strange Water — $7 — Sparkling coconut water, house-branded. The most Strangelove item on the non-alcoholic list.
• Oye Canbucha — $6 — Kombucha with lemon, ginger and honey. Local, and the afternoon alternative to a third coffee.
• Quicos — $4 — Spanish fried corn kernels. The cheapest thing on the menu and the correct snack at any hour.

Then the Wall Changes

The wine list is not a list. It is painted straight onto the wood paneling in colored letters, sorted by what you are in the mood for rather than by region: spritz, bubbly, orange, white, red, and a non-alcoholic row that is not an apology.

Everything is by the glass, and almost everything is between $12 and $17. A vermouth and tonic over ice with an olive is $12. The Portuguese Vinho Verde is $14, the Spanish Macabeo and Xarel-lo bubbles are $14, the Italian Lambrusco is $16, and a Chilean orange Muscat is $17. The one splurge is a German Scheurebe listed as the special at $25. There is a French non-alcoholic bottling of apple, grape and herbs at $13 that is doing far more than a mocktail usually does.

• Spritz — $12 — Vermouth and tonic over ice with an olive. The cheapest way into the evening menu.
• Quinta do Ermizio, Vinho Verde — $14 — Portuguese, light and salty. The correct order while it is still 95 degrees outside.
• Folicello Il Rosso, Lambrusco — $16 — Italian, chilled, fizzy red. The bottle that converts people who say they don't like red.
• Llomos de Llahuen, Muscat — $17 — Chilean orange wine. The most interesting glass on the wall, and the one to ask about.
• Domaine de Miquette, Syrah — $15 — French, the house red. Ask what else is open before you commit.
• Domaine des Grottes Antidote — $13 — Non-alcoholic, apple and grape and herbs. Ordered on purpose, not as a consolation.

The food stays deliberately small: marinated olives $7, mixed nuts $7, Spanish corn nuts, bread and whipped butter $6, a cheese plate at $20 and charcuterie with cheese at $22. There is a rotating pop-up element to it too, with guest kitchens taking over on scattered nights, so the board is worth reading rather than assuming.

Espresso is $4 and nothing on the wine wall is over $17 by the glass. Both halves are priced like a neighborhood bar instead of like an occasion.

A 20% tip is included on tabs left open, which is worth knowing before you start a tab at 6pm and add to it until close. Outside food and drink are not allowed, and street parking on Cesar Chavez fills fast on weekend evenings.

When to Go

Mornings are the quiet version: shade on the patio, room at the tables, and the full coffee board. Listings disagree on exactly when the doors open and close, somewhere around 7:30am with the room running until 10pm most nights and later Thursday through Saturday, so check @strangeloveatx before a late run. The switch from cafe to wine bar happens in the late afternoon, and the interesting hour is right at the seam, when half the room still has a laptop out and the other half has a glass of Lambrusco.

It is the rare Austin spot you can honestly recommend for 8am and 8pm without changing your reasoning in between.