The baristas are already getting to know the regulars at this Bishop Arts spot.
La Reunion owner/operator Michael Mettendorf opened La Reunion in Oak Cliff in October. It’s his second entrepreneurial venture, after he opened State Street Coffee in Uptown Dallas in 2014.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)
Don’t consider La Reunion in Oak Cliff a coffee shop, even though the shop’s general manager Ali Abderrahman was the most lauded barista in Texas after scoring high at the 2019 U.S. Barista Championship. La Reunion’s owner, Michael Mettendorf, has more than 10 years of experience launching indie coffee shops in Dallas and is a self-proclaimed coffee geek.
La Reunion is a coffee shop, but Mettendorf wants it to have a more robust identity in its Bishop Arts digs. They prefer to call it a “parlor” — a place where there’s coffee, wine, beer, cocktails and a from-scratch food menu.
“We’re not a bar, a restaurant or a coffee shop,” Mettendorf says. “We’re all of the above and none at the same time.”
The shop was named for the utopian community La Réunion, formed near the banks of the Trinity River in the mid-1800s. Mettendorf liked the history and wanted his shop to have a tie to its Oak Cliff community.
“We wanted to be reverent to the neighborhood,” he says.
