One of the most popular shopping malls near campus for food just got a caffeinated upgrade, and it’s the opening of Eiland Coffee Roaster’s proper-sized coffee shop—Eiland at Canyon Creek.
Nestled on the side of Shady’s in the same mall as Sweet Firefly Ice Cream and Feng Cha Richardson, Eiland at Canyon Creek is technically an extension of Eiland Coffee Roaster’s, which already sold its coffees on Interurban Street. However, the new shop is located just a five minute drive away from campus, and has an actual seating area along with an expanded menu. You could easily consider biking to the shop from campus, and a morning walk wouldn’t be out of the question, although you might want to wait for the temperatures to die down a bit. Free WiFi with a speed of 5MBps down and up is perfectly acceptable for most academic work, and even when the restaurant is full I got my food and coffee faster than I could set up my laptop and sit down.
That coffee is also excellent, which I could’ve told you a few months ago, but it’s important that it stayed that way with the new location. If you had the fortune to have known about Eiland before, it’s just as good here while being closer to home. The price is about average for iced drinks, around $4-5, while the hot drinks and pour-over ranges from $3-5 based on size. I am a personal fan of the espresso brews that Eiland uses, and you can actually taste the coffee’s unique flavors underneath the vanilla syrup, as opposed to most other generic coffee chains that overload their drinks with sweetener. And if you like it too, you can buy the beans right off the shelf before you leave.
On top of that, Eiland has hopped on board the La Casita train, my favorite baked goods train to hop onto. La Casita is an excellent bakery normally only open to the public on the weekends, but during the week they deliver their baked goods to various cafes in the Richardson area, and Eiland at Canyon Creek is one of them. Cruffins, pastries and other baked goods are available for $3-4, providing an excellent morning sweet treat. They also make their own savory snacks on top of the La Casita imports, and the margarita flatbread I tried was excellent. They didn’t have to have tasty cheese, but they sure did.
I cannot recommend Eiland enough as new option to consider to loop into your morning coffee routine. Quite frankly, it’s closer, better and cheaper than most coffee shops near campus. If you need further convincing, they also have beer and wine, and toffee crunch syrup. A good range of options to fit any student that’s just 5, 10 or 20 minutes away depending on mode of transportation, Eiland at Canyon Creek opened just in time for the new semester. It’s the perfect place to get your fix and start the school year right.