This past Saturday, after stalking the New Girl apartment building, which I blogged about on Monday, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to grab a bite to eat at one of the many Arts District (my new favorite neighborhood!) restaurants nearby. We ended up settling on The Novel Café, just down the street from the New Girl building, and after ordering our food, I asked the cashier if anything had ever been filmed on the premises. Well, let me tell you, I just about keeled over when she informed me that Little Black Book, one of my favorite movies EVER, had filmed at the eatery way back in 2003. As the lights started to go off in my head, I realized that I was actually standing in a location that I had been trying to track down for years – the supposed New Jersey-area coffee shop where Stacy (Brittany Murphy) met Joyce (Julianne Nicholson) for the first time in the flick. I cannot tell you the countless hours I wasted looking for that darn café online, all to no avail, and here the GC and I had just unknowingly wandered right into it. I so love it when that happens!
At the time of the filming, The Novel Café was actually a Groundwork Coffee shop, but, thankfully, virtually none of the interior or exterior was altered when the place changed hands.
As you can see above, The Novel Café is an adorable little coffee shop. Thanks to its exposed brick walls, industrial-style ambiance and New Yorky-vibe, I, of course, absolutely fell in love with the place on the spot. Oh, how I am missing Manhattan right now! But I digress. I am very happy to report that, besides being a cool hangout, The Novel Café also serves up some great food. I ordered a mushroom cheeseburger, which was phenomenal, and I am not even that big a fan of hamburgers. The GC opted for the tuna sandwich, which he also loved. Because of its almost hidden, out-of-the-way location, I would have guessed that the eatery would be a big-time celebrity hotspot, but the only celeb connection that I could find online was the fact that actress Emmy Rossum and boyfriend Tyler Jacob Moore were spotted there last June.
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In Little Black Book, Stacy sets up a meeting, under false pretenses, with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend Joyce at the former Groundwork Coffee. Both the exterior . . .
. . . and the interior of the cafe were used in the filming.
Ironically enough, musician Gavin Rossdale played the very small role of the barista who gave Stacy a hard time in that scene. In the credits, his character is listed as “Random”. LOL
Thanks to fave website OnLocationVacations, I learned that the coffee shop was also featured in the Season 1 episode of The Nine Lives of Chloe King titled “All Apologies”. The exterior appeared in the scene in which Chloe King (Skyler Samuels) randomly runs into her crush, Brian Rezza (Grey Damon).
The interior was later used in the scene in which Chloe is late meeting her friends Amy (Grace Phipps) and Paul (Ki Hong Lee) for dinner.
Also thanks to OnLocationVacations, I learned that The Novel Café was featured (very briefly) in the Season 5 episode of Criminal Minds titled “The Internet is Forever”, in the scene in which a serial killer spies on his next victim at a coffee shop.
The area just to the right of The Novel Café’s entrance was used as the coffee shop where Alistair (Robert Miano) met with Lavinia (Meadow Williams) in the ultra-odd 2011 flick Mysteria.
The Novel Café also appeared in 2003’s The Shape of Things, but unfortunately I could not find any copies of that movie online, so I was only able to make a few screen captures from its preview on YouTube.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Novel Café, the former Groundwork Coffee from Little Black Book, is located at 811 Traction Avenue in the Arts District of Downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the café’s official website here.
