My friend Janelle put it plainly last February: “If you haven’t done a Sunday morning at Stoker’s yet, you’re wasting your weekends.” I filed that away for about three months before I finally listened to her. Now I go more than I probably should.
Stoker’s Roast is on Broadway, yeah, but it occupies a quieter stretch than the bar-and-brewery corridor everyone talks about — closer to the northern end, where foot traffic gets sparse on weekday mornings and the light through the front windows actually lands on your table instead of getting blocked by a crowd. It’s a coffee shop first, a café second, and the kind of place where people spread out with laptops for two hours without anyone giving them a look.
The coffee is the whole point. They roast in-house, which you figure out the moment you open the door — there’s a warm, slightly smoky undertone to the air that doesn’t smell like anything you’d get at a chain. I usually order the pour-over with whatever single-origin they’re featuring that week; the person at the counter will actually tell you about the bean if you ask, not in an annoying way, just in a “we care about this” way. Cold brew is available year-round and it’s properly strong, not the watered-down version some places pass off. Flat whites are reliable. Lattes run a little sweet by default, so ask for less syrup if you want the espresso to come through.
Food is lighter than you might want if you come in starving — pastries, some toast options, a rotating grain bowl situation that tends to work better than it sounds. I’ve had the avocado toast on a thick slice of local sourdough twice now and I’d order it a third time. Nothing is fancy. Prices are fair: pour-over around four dollars, most food items under ten.
What I keep coming back to, beyond the coffee itself, is the pace of the place on a rainy Tuesday. I went in mid-March on a genuinely miserable afternoon — sleet, that gray specific to Fargo springs — and the shop was maybe a third full. Someone was playing a record in the corner. The staff were talking quietly to each other behind the bar. Nobody rushed me. I sat with a cortado and my notebook for ninety minutes and felt like I’d actually been somewhere, which is a harder thing to manufacture than it sounds in a city that doesn’t have an excess of slow, comfortable rooms.
Saturday mornings are a different animal — busier, louder, a little bit of a wait for drinks, and you might not get your preferred seat. I’d go earlier than you think you need to, before ten if possible. Weekday mornings before nine are the sweet spot if your schedule allows it.
There’s no drive-through. Street parking on Broadway can be a small adventure depending on the season, but there’s usually something within a block. Dogs are welcome outside when the weather cooperates, which Fargo people appreciate.
If you’ve been mourning the loss of some of the older coffee spots downtown — and there are a few worth mourning — Stoker’s is where I’d send you first. It isn’t trying to be anything other than what it is, and that, in my experience, is exactly what makes it work.
