Kilo Coffee Weighs Every Detail at New Dallas Cafe

Inside the new Kilo Coffee bar just north of Dallas in University Park. All images courtesy of Kilo Coffee.

Meticulously measured approaches to brewing and service are at the center of Kilo Coffee, a new high-end specialty coffee bar that opened in September in Dallas.

At the Snider Plaza shopping complex in University Park, the cafe’s interior promotes a sense of calm with stone, concrete and wood surfaces combining with sandy-white walls and natural light from overhead skylights. At the center of the cafe, a 45-foot U-shaped bar is topped with dark quartzite.

Orders are taken along one side of the U, with signature-drink preparation and pickup stations running along the longer center section. An 11-foot, four-seat slow bar occupies the opposite side, where baristas pull 15-gram-dose shots on a Meticulous Espresso machine fitted with Sworksdesign filter baskets.

Two Weber Workshops single-dose EG-1 grinders stand between the Meticulous and a manual brew station featuring Orea Z1 brewers also loaded with 15-gram doses. An Acaia Orion bean doser streamlines weighing and loading of doses into Weber Workshops Bean Cellar vials stored in a chest freezer under the counter.

Kilo’s owners intend to grow the frozen library to eight to 10 single-origin coffees available at any given time. An upright freezer in the back stores additional whole-bean inventory purchased in 5-pound bags from Arkansas-based Onyx Coffee Lab before the coffees are divided into single-dose or batch portions.

“I’m always looking on the website to find something we really like,” Kilo Coffee Co-Owner Alex Vu told Daily Coffee News. “From there, if we like it, we’ll just keep it in the freezer until we want to serve it.”

Kilo divides its slow-bar coffees into three profile categories: Expressive, for coffees featuring interesting post-harvest processing and flavors; Refined, for rare or exceptionally high-scoring coffees; and Balanced, for single-origin coffees and blends with more familiar or comforting character. 

“We want to make the slow bar really approachable to everybody,” Vu said. “The idea is to find something for people that haven’t had a pourover before, to get them into that world and then hopefully move them into different categories.”

Seating includes wooden tables and chairs alongside cushioned lounge furniture beneath sconces, skylights and modern chandeliers. 

Some of the features were handpicked by Kilo Coffee co-owners and siblings Alex, Victoria and Ryan Vu during their travels overseas. 

Fellow co-owners Anthony Nguyen and Bao Nguyen, who are not related by family, worked with Kuzuu Design Founder Hatsumi Kuzuu on the shop’s layout and additional interior details. 

Kuzuu also helped design V’s House, the Vu family’s Vietnamese and sushi restaurant in North Richland Hills. With Alex Vu leading Kilo’s coffee program, Victoria Vu, who earned a nutrition degree from Texas A&M University, leads the onsite kitchen, producing sweet and savory pastries, sandwiches, burritos and desserts.

Bao Nguyen focuses on media and marketing for Kilo, while Anthony Nguyen leads development of signature drinks such as Orange .013, a Mont Blanc coffee with orange, nutmeg and dark chocolate, and Bergamot .008, an Earl Grey espresso tonic with lemon.

Beyond the slow bar, a Mavam MM undercounter super-automatic espresso machine handles espresso for hot drinks. Kilo also uses the machine for espresso batches that are chilled for cold drinks.

Alex Vu said Kilo is open to additional locations over time, but for now the team plans to keep evolving the offerings at its first shop, rotating coffees, brew methods and equipment. Seasonal drinks will also continue to change, while the team develops a coffee omakase program.

“The goal that we have with Kilo is to make specialty coffee very approachable,” Vu said. “The idea is to continue what we’re doing now, but to elevate a sense of trying new things and being open to experimenting with different methods of brewing and extraction.”

Kilo Coffee is located at 6600 Snider Plaza, Suite 110, in University Park, Texas.

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