Written by Jordan Michelman.

Have you ever seen a picture of a coffee shop and felt utterly compelled to learn more? Such was my immediate response to Retrospect Coffee in Houston, Texas, which is located inside of a totally unique and completely unusual looking 1921 Gulf Gas Station building. This has to be one of the most singular coffee bars anywhere in America today—and I just had to find out what was happening here in advance of the 2025 SCA Expo in Houston.

It turns out that when owners Chris Davis and Jasmine Wise took over the space, the previous tenants had set the stage for success—all they needed to do was to double down on quality coffee service, putting in place professional gear (including a 3-Group LM Linea PB), and kicking off a multi-roaster program that features the best of Houston’s roaring roasting scene. I sat down with Chris Davis to learn more about the program at Retrospect, which should be high on your list of must-visits during Expo Weekend.  

Hey Chris – thanks so much for talking with us. By way of introduction, for someone who is unfamiliar with Retrospect — tell us a little bit about what you do and the nature of your unique little coffee bar. 

Retrospect is housed inside an old gas station here in Houston. It’s a historic building, and it’s really very small, but that’s part of what makes us unique. Jasmine and I are the second owners of the remodeled space—we took over about two years ago and were able to take the previous owner’s vision of the space and run with it. This was a turnkey situation for us that really let us do our thing. 

I was a bike messenger for many years in downtown Houston, and often I would do delivery for bakeries and coffee shops, which is what got me into higher end coffee. Every place I visited was so cool and it made me start to dream about this idea of owning a cafe. At first we thought we wanted a mobile cart, but then this gas station space became available, and by luck we found it. 

We come to coffee completely from the consumer side, but I have been so spoiled by the level of expertise you can find at third-wave coffee shops around Houston. We wanted to be a part of that but also offer a homey vibe. 

It is incredibly cool that you’re inside this old Gulf gas station building. What are some of the challenges of doing business inside this tiny space? 

I spent a lot of years working right across the street from this place and have loved the building for a long time. It was an old gas station that ran until the late 1960s, and then it sat vacant for a long time. There was a ton of graffiti on the building, and we’ve found some incredible old pictures of the space. 

Running a cafe inside of this kind of building definitely has challenges. Technically we’re not allowed to touch the exterior structure; we can build new stuff around it though, and so we have two containers on site that we use for bathrooms and storage. 

It’s a very small space, which is a challenge, and we do outdoor service only, which is hard in bad weather. We are also only able to use space heaters inside, which sometimes aren’t enough. The build-out we inherited isn’t really conducive to a good workflow, but we’ve figured out what works for us. The sweet spot is when we’ve got three people working inside; any less and we slow down, but any more and it’s too crowded to operate. 

Let’s talk about gear — what is your espresso set-up currently? What gear do you use for grinding, filter coffee, etc behind the bar?

So we went with a La Marzoco Linea PB three group — we saw right away that business was increasing, and so we needed that. We’ve moved to a Mazzer Robur-S for the grinder, a conical burr grinder, and it does the job well. Both of those machines are huge upgrades from what we had before — when we purchased the shop, we had a Slayer, I think it was the V3, and it was manual, and that thing was shitting the bed constantly. For grinding, we inherited an old Anfim, but now we use a K30 Twin, and it’s a lot better, especially when you’re regularly changing out the burr sets. 

I wish we had the real estate to do pour overs but we don’t. Sometimes I’m too dumb — have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? That’s me. I spent a really long time dialing in a Fetco brewer, trying to chase a pour-over style for our batch brew, learning how to program the water and bloom function and water temperature. We’re still working on perfecting it.

I love a multiroaster, and checking on Instagram it looks like y’all are regularly serving different coffees from around the country. How do you go about selecting roasters for Retrospect? What are you looking for when you evaluate coffee?

When we bought the shop they were already doing the local roaster thing, but Jasmine and I wanted to be able to bring together lots of different coffees in one place—to be able to serve multiple great coffees roasted in Houston. It was really attractive to us to be hyperlocal, and then from there, branch out a little bit. 

For our espressos, most of our Americanos, and many of our mixed drinks, we use a blend from Amaya Coffee. We rely heavily on them for our espresso service, and we also sell them in retail and feature them for single-origin coffees. We’ve also recently featured Three Keys, Tavo, and Blendin Coffee Club.  Zachary from Blendin Coffee Club talked to me while we were going through the purchase of the building, and as soon as we purchased, they were there to ask if we wanted them in the shop. Of course, we did, and they were a huge help. They do award-winning stuff — between them and Amaya, it’s like two edges of a sword. 

We had Proud Mary in for a while, that was one of our first nationals we had in — and we’ve had Greater Goods now, which is out of Dripping Springs. All kinds of people send us samples, but we go by what we’ve heard and what our friends are drinking and go from there. Next, we want to bring in some Little Waves maybe, or some stuff from LA, and for SCA, we have to jump on the ball, but we want to try and do a program where some of the roasters that will be presenting there can be at our shop for retail to feature Houston.  We love swapping out single origins on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, and that comes down to juggling ordering. 

Honestly I also love a good crepe — why serve crepes at your shop? What’s the most popular crepe? What’s the *weirdest* crepe you ever served?

Crepes are something we inherited from the former owners, but they’re really popular. All our crepes have Texas-themed names, based on famous Texans. There’s a Willie Nelson with Strawberries Nutella and granola, there’s an Archie Bell which has cheddar cheese, bacon, and maple syrup with a scrambled egg. I like the Janis Joplin which comes with avocado, scrambled egg, green onion and cheddar cheese with sriracha on the side. 

Houston is going to be home for the 2025 SCA Expo — what are you excited about for this event? What stuff in Houston do you hope folks check out? Any coffee, food, or culture recommendations?

Do the coffee tour! If you’re starting down at Expo or in an Airbnb around the area, between Discovery Green and us, you’ve got a plethora of shops—Koffetaria, Fifth Vessel, Un Caffe, Doshi House, and that’s all just within this small area. There’s Blacksmith in the Montrose, and Little Dreamer just opened up their shop. 

For food we’ve got a great banh mi sandwich scene, and a lot of incredible Vietnamese food in general here—Cali Sandwich & Phoin Midtown is my favorite. If you’re into the nightlife over by our shop on Main Street there’s “The Block” with bars and live music venues including The Continental Club and Double Trouble, which is a coffee shop and a bar that’s open late. 

What’s something unique about Houston that you think gets overlooked?

Our museum scene is honestly incredible. You could come here just for that. If you do just one thing, go to Rothko Chapel—that’s a great place to go and just hang out, bring some lunch with you, and sit outside. 

Visit Retrospect Coffee Bar on Instagram.