La Casita Coffee Turns a New Page at Half Price Books' Flagship

Amazon.com makes it easy to shop for books. You can do so from the comfort of your couch while still in your bathrobe, and there is no one to judge you for spending perhaps too much time in the romance or cryptozoology section. Sometimes you want to read about the Mothman without having to be bothered combing your hair or putting on eyeliner. But something is lost as well.

Used bookstores, on the other hand, provide more than the online experience can offer. You have the chance to stumble upon an old treasure that you didn’t even know you needed while getting lost within the serpentine rows of overflowing shelves full of books stacked haphazardly and often in no discernable order while the bookstore cat suns itself in a nook at the back of the store.

You bring the dusty dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman’s early printing of Leaves of Grass up to the register where the owner is reading a newspaper and doesn’t even realize you’re there until you discreetly cough, and while he gets ready to check you out you help yourself to a cup of coffee from the urn at front.

Try doing that at Amazon.com.

The Half Price Books’ location on Northwest Highway is a huge 50,000-square-foot behemoth of a mothership that serves as both the flagship retail location as well as corporate headquarters. It’s so large that a bit of the used bookstore charm is lost. There are no permanent cat residents, for example, and it has a uniformity of organization and signage among its sections, but it does still have some meandering aisles as well as old nostalgic bric-a-brac strategically placed here and there.

Its large size, moreover, means that instead of a simple coffee urn at the front, an entire coffee shop is within its walls. Or, at least there was for several years until Black Forest Café closed up shop a while ago.
Enter Maricsa Trejo and husband Alex Henderson of La Casita Coffee, who have been wholesaling their cruffins, croissants and other baked goods and pastries to well over a hundred local restaurants and coffee shops for a couple of years now. With the addition of Brianna Short, they have branched out to brick-and-mortar locations, with operations in Rowlett, Richardson and, as of Aug. 20, at the Half Price Books on Northwest Highway.
Currently, it's only open from 11 until 3 every day, but eventually they plan to become a tiki bar and restaurant during the evenings. They offer coffee, matcha, hot chocolate, horchata and tea along with some breakfasts (Benedict, mushroom toast, etc.) and sandwiches (Nashville hot chicken, Cubano, etc.), but the stars of the show are their pastries.
The aroma of freshly baked tarts, doughnuts, muffins, quiche, cruffins, croissants and breads fills the newly renovated space at the back of the bookstore. There is seating at the bar, tables inside and outside, as well as tables throughout the bookstore proper, of course.

We ordered a latte, a chai latte and a survey of their baked goodies: a croissant, banana muffin, almond croissant, cruffin and cinnamon roll. The pastries were extremely good and served warm. The plain croissant was buttery but not overly so, flaky and soft. The caramel churro cruffin was less sweet than the name would imply, which is a good thing. The almond croissant was full of almond flavor with a healthy portion of slivered almonds atop and a slight dusting of powdered sugar, sliced in half for easier eating. The banana muffin, like the cruffin, was also not as sweet as expected, with the banana flavor a bit understated, but it was moist and delicious. The cinnamon roll was serviceable, a bit less ooey-gooey than typical, but that just made it easier to eat as well.
La Casita Coffee is a welcome addition to the Half Price Books experience, and now once again you can finally sip on your double shot espresso while reading a few chapters of the latest James Patterson book (if you must). Maybe someday they’ll finally get a few bookstore cats as well.