What it is
Lux Central is the coffeehouse central Phoenix built its mornings around, a long, low, dim run of rooms on Central Avenue at Campbell, beside the light rail, where the beans are roasted on the premises, the croissants and scones come out of the back all day, a kitchen cooks breakfast and lunch, and at some point in the late afternoon the bar in the rear room starts pouring cocktails while the espresso machine keeps going. The furniture is mismatched, the light is low, the music is loud enough and the crowd is the city’s creative and academic class with laptops open, which is a sentence you cannot write about any coffee shop in Scottsdale.
The coffee is the Valley’s benchmark. The espresso drinks are precise, the house chai has a cult, and the pastry case, baked through the day rather than delivered at dawn, is what the line at 8 AM is really for. The kitchen’s mac and cheese has a citywide reputation that it mostly deserves. In the evening the same rooms hold a bar with a decent cocktail list, and the shift from coffeehouse to bar happens without anybody rearranging the chairs.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has good coffee and our coffee note ranks it; Cartel and Press roast seriously and the small shops in Old Town are pleasant. What Scottsdale does not have is a coffeehouse that is a place in the city’s life, where the morning and the evening are the same room and the person at the next table is drawing something. Lux is that, and it is twenty minutes down Camelback. It also happens to be the right breakfast before the Heard Museum, a mile south, and the right nightcap after Durant’s.
The practical version
Twenty minutes from Old Town: Camelback west to Central, south to Campbell, on the east side of Central. Small lot, street parking, and the Campbell/Central train stop at the door. Opens at 6 every day; the bar carries the evening, historically to 10. Order at the counter, find a table, stay as long as you like. Cash is not required and neither is a laptop, though you will feel underdressed without one.
When to go
Weekday mornings before 8 are the quiet hour, when the regulars have their tables and the line is short. Weekend mornings are the scene, with a line to the door and no seats; worth it once for the people-watching, not twice for the coffee. Late afternoon into evening is the bar, lower key than any Scottsdale bar at the same hour, and the right place to kill the time between a museum closing at 4 and a dinner reservation at 6.
Summer is when Lux earns its keep for visitors: a big, dark, cold room with coffee in it is exactly what a July morning in Phoenix wants.
What to order
- A cortado or a latte macchiato, to taste the house roast without milk getting in the way; the Americano is refillable if you are staying.
- The house chai, made here, not from a box, and the drink Lux is known for among people who do not drink coffee.
- Whatever is warm in the pastry case: a croissant before 9, a savory scone at any hour, a bear claw if you have earned it.
- The mac and cheese at lunch, or the breakfast plates if you came hungry.
- A cocktail after 5, from a short list that is better than a coffeehouse bar has any right to be.
The neighborhood
Lux sits in the stretch of Central Avenue between Camelback and Indian School that Phoenix calls uptown, a mile of mid-rise offices, 1950s apartment courts and the restaurants that serve them. Changing Hands, the bookstore with the bar inside, is a mile north at Camelback and 3rd Avenue. The Heard Museum is a mile south, and Durant’s, the 1950 steakhouse, is between them; the four make a complete midtown day, and the light rail connects all of them.
With kids
A loud room with pastries and no table service is fine for children for about forty minutes, which is how long a child’s interest in a bear claw lasts. The train outside is the entertainment.
The story
Lux began as a small coffee bar on this block of Central Avenue in the 2000s, one of a handful of independent coffeehouses that opened along the avenue as the light rail was being built and uptown Phoenix was deciding what it wanted to be. It roasted its own beans from early on, which almost nobody in Phoenix did then, and it drew the crowd that an independent coffeehouse near the city’s arts district, its museums and its downtown campus draws: students, architects, the staff of the magazines and agencies in the Central Avenue towers, and the people who were about to open the restaurants that now surround it. When the space next door came free, Lux took it, and the small coffee bar became the warren of rooms it is now, with a kitchen, a bakery and a bar.
The light rail opened along Central in 2008 with a stop at Campbell, outside the door, and that settled Lux’s place in the city: the one coffeehouse you could reach from downtown, from the museums and from Tempe without a car. It has since become the kind of institution that gets written about in national travel pieces and filmed for social media, which has brought weekend lines that the regulars resent and the owners presumably do not. The coffee has stayed good through it, which is the hard part.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s coffee culture is younger and came from the other direction: the roasters who opened in Old Town and the Airpark in the 2010s learned from Lux’s generation and built smaller, brighter, quieter rooms for a city that drinks its coffee on the way to a tee time. Several of the Valley’s roasters and baristas passed through here. The difference between Lux and a Scottsdale coffee shop is the difference between a city and a resort town, and both have their uses; our coffee note is about the second.
Getting there
From Old Town, Camelback Road west about six miles to Central Avenue, then south two blocks to Campbell; Lux is on the east side of Central. Twenty minutes with no traffic, more at the morning rush on Camelback. Parking is a small lot and the side streets, both full on weekend mornings. The Valley Metro light rail’s Campbell/Central stop is at the door, and Lux is the obvious first stop on a car-free day down Central to the museums and downtown; our getting around note explains how to reach the line from Scottsdale, which does not have it.