The Lantern on Highway 105

On a bend of Highway 105 in Palmer Lake, a green-trimmed storefront with a lantern on its sign has quietly become one of the Tri-Lakes’ busiest breakfast tables. Lake & Lantern Café serves cinnamon rolls the size of a fist and coffee poured with unusual care. Its founder is also selling something harder to fit on a menu: a second chance.

The café is the work of Racquel Garcia, known to regulars as “Mama Garcia.” By her own account, told to KOAA News5 in March, addiction entered her life young; she has been sober for roughly 16 years. During her early recovery she attended meetings inside a small Palmer Lake restaurant. When the space later became available, she leased it and opened the café not chiefly as a business but, in her words, to “create a place for connection… free of alcohol.” She also founded HardBeauty, an organization that helps people rebuild after addiction, and has hired staff working through recovery of their own.

That premise runs through the whole operation. Alongside the espresso and lemonades sits a deliberately large slate of grown-up drinks with the alcohol removed: zero-proof beers and sparkling wine at 0.0%, “nearly-none” options under 0.5%, and a rotating set of house mocktails—classic, strawberry and lavender mojitos among them. The house coffee is Wagon Coffee, a Colorado roaster that employs women in recovery. The tagline on the door, “Living Life Lit Different,” is not only marketing; a chalkboard inside carries Marianne Williamson’s line about letting one’s own light shine.

The counter is where the philosophy becomes a habit. Sarah Sullivan, a fixture behind the espresso machine, has a reputation for two things: remembering repeat customers—often by name and usual order—and turning out consistently excellent coffee drinks. She is not the exception. The staff, front and back, are uniformly warm and plainly enjoy the work, which is the sort of detail a town notices faster than any slogan.

The food earns its own following. The cinnamon rolls—baked in-house under the Magnolia Bakehouse label and finished with a thick cream-cheese glaze—arrive warm and gooey, and are the item most likely to be photographed before it is eaten. The Sunrise Street Tacos are the savory counterpart: two street-style chicken breakfast tacos with an over-easy egg cooked into the tortilla, pickled shallots, jalapeños and cotija. The menu wears its geography openly—the High Street Omelette, the Balance Rock Benny, the 105 Coffee Cake named for the road out front—and leans local, with bacon, sausage and ham from Sara’s Sausage just up the road in Palmer Lake. Breakfast and lunch are served now; the owners plan to add dinner in spring and summer.

Setting is half the appeal. The sidewalk patio, shaded by teal umbrellas, is the place to be on a bright morning—the occasional freight train rumbling through Palmer Lake is best treated as local color rather than an intrusion. Indoors is unhurried and comfortable: wood floors, green trim, a Matisse print and that lantern-lit chalkboard, with picnic-to-go orders for anyone headed the few steps down to the lake.

Palmer Lake is a town that takes its light seriously—the star on the hillside above the lake is switched on every winter and defended fiercely. On Highway 105, another small light appears to be catching on.

If you go

Lake & Lantern Café · 84-2 CO-105, Palmer Lake, CO 80133 · (719) 300-8013
Website: lakeandlantern.com
Menu & online ordering: lakeandlantern.com/menu
Facebook: Lake & Lantern

Hours

Monday	6:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Tuesday	Closed
Wednesday	Closed
Thursday	6:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Friday	6:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Saturday	8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Sunday	8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Find it

Sources & method. Reporting draws on a visit to Lake & Lantern Café and the café’s own website and menu. Background on founder Racquel Garcia and her recovery advocacy draws on KOAA News5, “From addiction to advocacy: How a Palmer Lake restaurant owner is turning recovery into hope” (March 4, 2026). Garcia founded HardBeauty, a peer-led recovery organization; the café’s house coffee is Wagon Coffee, a Colorado roaster that employs women in recovery. Menu items and prices are current as of publication and subject to change. Photographs by The Monument Independent.

Correction (July 9, 2026): An earlier version of this story said Lake & Lantern’s founder bought the building that houses the café. In fact she leases the space; the building is still owned by Dave Wilson. The reference has been corrected.