Subtle Sophistication

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HighLife Cafe

407 E. Seventh St., 474-5338
Sun-Wed, 9am-midnight;
Thu-Sat, 9am-1am

HighLife Cafe photograph by John Anderson

Imagine a slightly off- 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 cliché. 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 café 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.