HighLife Cafe
407 E. Seventh St., 474-5338
Sun-Wed, 9am-midnight;
Thu-Sat, 9am-1am
 HighLife Cafe photograph by John Anderson |
the-beaten-track location with a low profile — one of those places you wish
there were more of in town, but love precisely because there exists no other
spot like it. Those of us who’ve discovered the unassuming coffeehouse/wine
bar/restaurant called HighLife Cafe have the feeling we’ve stumbled upon an
extraordinary little treasure. It’s one we’re eager to share, though not
without high hopes that the cafe’s charms will be preserved in the face of
potential popularity.
Begun by Scott Campbell and Mary Hall Rodman in July 1996, HighLife Cafe
(formerly The Wine Cellar and before that the California Hotel), today feels
one part honest country inn, one part understated urban coffee bar. It offers a
limited if well-executed menu, an extensive wine and port list and selection of
beer on tap, as well as changing daily food specials. Campbell and Rodman, both
veterans of coffeehouse and restaurant management, opened HighLife to fill what
they viewed as a gap in the Austin dining and drinking experience. With
HighLife they hoped to present what they describe between them as “a quiet
place to have a drink; a peaceful, somewhat intellectual location that is a
step up foodwise from typical bars and coffeehouses. A cafe with enough light
to read in, clean air (HighLife has cigars available but operates air cleaners
and a special ventilation system), and continuous service from breakfast
through late-night.”
Inside, bare limestone walls and wooden floors greet customers who can pile
around faux copper-topped tables, sidle up to the imposing wooden bar, or
settle into a voguish worn sofa or armchair before ordering. Well-stocked
bookshelves contain the latest New York Times and Christian Science
Monitors, an odd selection of magazines that includes Cigar
Aficionado and Town & Country, and a mess of hand-me-down
novels, dictionaries, and film encyclopedias. Vintage jazz generally flows from
the cafe’s speakers in the evenings while HighLife’s morning music possesses a
more classical bent.
One of the best times to slip into HighLife for a little respite and/or
rejuvenation turns out to be at breakfast. The cafe opens daily at a very
civilized 9am and presents a variety of out-of-the-ordinary breakfast foods —
no bagels or muffins on the menu here. On a recent cold morning I spooned up a
steaming bowl of oatmeal studded with currants ($1.50), the perfect winter
pick-me-up splashed modestly with milk and sprinkled with a little brown sugar.
A 12oz. pot of velvety black French press coffee ($1.50), hand-ground in an
antique grinder on the wall behind the bar, and a heavenly, pulp-riddled glass
of fresh squeezed orange juice (the press is also behind the bar), rounded out
my meal. Another matinal treat at HighLife are the waffles made with a
delectable, cinnamon-laced batter and topped either with butter and maple syrup
($2.75) or seasonal fruit. Egg lovers may chose to indulge in the cafe’s
unusual steamed eggs, cooked using the hot vapor from the espresso machine.
The pressed-for-time downtown lunch crowd will be pleased to learn that
sandwiches occupy a considerable portion of HighLife’s menu, and while their
fillings tend toward the ordinary — turkey, tuna, etc. — the thick slices of
homemade bread on which they’re served distinguish the sandwiches from the
ordinary.
Dinner offerings at HighLife echo the straightforwardness of the cafe’s
breakfast and lunch preparations. My most recent evening meal at the cafe had
all the trappings of comfort food without the clich�. It began with an
order of High Plains Hummus ($5.00 large/$3.95 small), a Texas take on the
popular Middle Eastern mezze made of kidney beans and chipotle peppers
along with a healthy dose of garlic. The smooth, spicy spread amply filled a
wide-mouth caf� au lait cup and came to the table accompanied by both
corn chips and sinfully dense triangles of HighLife’s homemade hearth bread. A
glass of the Duncan Peak Cabernet Sauvignon held its own against the
appetizer’s strong flavors. Next came the entrees — a meaty slab of smoked
trout that shared billing with a thick pool of polenta and a mixed green salad
($5.95), and a soup du jour/Thai noodle salad combination plate ($5.50).
The smoked trout tasted huge with smoke, its richness belying its modest size,
and it took me away to a memorable meal of smoked trout I once shared with my
family in a damp, Scottish inn on the waterside. The scallion-spiked polenta
provided the perfect counterpart to the trout, still rustic and earthy, yet
silky and soft — a welcome change on the palate. Finally, the accompanying
salad’s “Japanese” vinaigrette punctuated the meal with an exclamation of
citrus and ginger. A glass of the Monticello Pinot Noir from the Napa Valley
($8.75) added a smooth touch of soft berries to the meal.
The soup du jour/salad combination plate may be one of the cafe’s lighter
offerings, but it, too, had the appeal of hearty, stick-to-your-ribs fare. The
soup of the day was roasted vegetable, a blend of potatoes, button mushrooms,
red bell peppers, and onions afloat in a highly perfumed broth that hinted,
perhaps, of Thai curry or a similar, exotic spice blend. The noodle salad, thin
ribbons of pasta dotted with crushed peanuts and cilantro and smoothed over
with a creamy dressing, oozed of freshness, putting the standard “pre-fab” soup
and salads, made up in big batches long before ever being ordered, to shame.
In fact, it is precisely this homemade aspect that gives the HighLife Cafe
much of its appeal. A meal at the cafe-cum-bar-cum-coffeehouse is not unlike
dining at the home of a good friend you admire for his or her impeccable,
unaffected taste. Frivolous food flourishes are intentionally absent, and while
HighLife’s menu is indeed simple, meals are consistently well-executed and
exemplary for their honest homespun quality. A parting thought: Don’t go to
HighLife in search of the stellar, trendy, or attention-grabbing. What this
comfortable, little cafe excels at is serving up subtle sophistication.
This article appears in January 31 • 1997 and January 31 • 1997 (Cover).