There are maybe a few dozen Clover brewing machines still operating in American coffee shops. Monkey Nest Coffee on Burnet Road has one of them. Starbucks bought the company that made it back in 2008, effectively halting production and letting most of the surviving units age out of service. The fact that Monkey Nest has kept theirs running — and still pulls single-cup brews through it every morning — says something about how seriously they take coffee here.
The shop sits on Burnet Road just north of 45th Street, which means it’s planted squarely in the stretch of Austin that has quietly been interesting for years without making too much noise about it. There’s a used record shop down the block, a taqueria around the corner, and a general sense that the neighborhood is still mostly for people who actually live in it. Monkey Nest fits that profile.
Walk in on a weekday morning and you’ll likely find a mix of laptop regulars, a few people reading actual books, and at least one table that looks like a low-stakes business meeting. The space is smallish — exposed brick, wood surfaces, none of the aggressively industrial design that showed up in every new Austin coffee shop between 2012 and 2019. It feels broken in, which is a compliment.
The Clover is the thing to try if you want to understand why people cared so much when it disappeared. You pick a single-origin bean — the rotation changes, but there’s usually something from Ethiopia and something from Latin America — and the machine brews it cup by cup using a vacuum-press method that extracts differently than a pour-over or French press. The result is clean but textured, with a finish that doesn’t turn bitter as it cools. A Clover cup runs around $5 or $6 depending on the bean. Worth it.
They also pull solid espresso, and the cortado is reliable without being fussy. Cold brew is available in warmer months, which in Austin means roughly nine of twelve. The pastry selection is modest — a few things from local bakeries — but nobody’s coming here primarily for a scone.
What Monkey Nest has that’s harder to quantify is a consistency of character. It’s been on Burnet long enough that it has regulars who’ve been coming since the neighborhood was cheaper, and it hasn’t chased trends in a way that would drive them off. The staff tends to know what’s on the menu well enough to actually explain it, which sounds like a low bar but isn’t always.
Parking on Burnet can require a little patience — street spots, mostly, and the block gets busy after 9 a.m. Going early or coming after the morning rush settles around 10:30 makes things easier. They’re open daily, typically from around 7 a.m. on weekdays and slightly later on weekends. Budget roughly $5–$8 for a coffee drink, less if you’re just getting a drip.
Austin has more coffee shops per capita than it probably needs at this point, and most of them are fine. Monkey Nest is better than fine because it has an actual point of view — about what coffee should taste like, about what a neighborhood shop should feel like, about keeping a piece of equipment running because it still makes the best cup in the room.
