Elixir Vitae closed in late 2019 in the pre-covid era. The Michigan Daily covered the end of the cafe, which had been serving coffee to graduate students since 2002.

How it was

Cafe on Maynard Street near the Nickels Arcade, formerly known as Cafe Ambrosia. The name was changed in September 2012, when owner Ed Renoullet opened a second location on East Liberty Street.

What's on the bulletin board 2004

Ambrosia now has wifi, and has always had lots of power outlets. The fair trade coffee is Roos Roast (or at least it was last time I checked).

The basement, previously used for storage, has been renovated as additional cafe space, more than doubling the effective size of the place.

There was a Cafe Ambrosia in Evanston, IL from the summer of 2005 until March of 2009 when it closed.

In the news

• Elixir Vitae coffee shop shuts doors after nearly two decades, Michigan Daily, January 14, 2020. Jimmy Curtiss worked at Elixir Vitae as a barista for 15 years. He said he valued Elixir’s community-oriented values. “It really was a townie coffee shop that I feel like didn’t actually cater to any specific demographic. It was just kind of for everyone which was really, really cool,” Curtiss said. “It was its own little insular universe, and it was just bizarre, because it was this isolated, self-contained space, and yet it was so close to campus.”

• AnnArbor.com, 2 Oct 12: Cafe Ambrosia owner opens 2nd downtown Ann Arbor coffee house under new name

As part of the move, he also changed the cafe names from Cafe Ambrosia to Elixir Vitae Coffee and Tea.

“I knew years ago if we ever expanded, we should probably do this since there are many Cafe Ambrosias and also an Ambrosia Coffee Co.,” Renollet wrote on the cafe’s Facebook page in September.​

• Coffee Shop Culture, Michigan Daily, November 2007

(Owner Ed Renoullet) tries to cultivate a reputation as the "grad student café," he says, and he's met considerable success. The people who sit in Ambrosia look older than the typical Amer's crowd, unless they look younger - some local high school students have taken to sitting out front, and it seems that people sport longer hair and carry around more esoteric novels than they do at Starbucks.

Health inspection for Elixir Vitae from Health Inspection Mapper.