Samuel C.
Yelp
Okay, keep in mind what this is.
This is the coffee house inside the Hotel Van Zandt.
Anyone who has ever stayed in a hotel and has wanted coffee knows that the average hotel coffee house is awfulness on a stick.
It is generally a Starbucks, in some small and ungainly location that represents "extra space" that gets rented out.
The food offerings are smaller than those of a normal Starbucks because they don't have the backspace needed to keep the offerings good.
You "can" if you want get a coffee from the hotel main restaurant.
Expect to pay $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for nothing special.
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Cafe 605 is way better than that.
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Okay, Keep in mind the neighborhood.
Rainey Street is a coffee desert.
Rainey Street is about drink drink drink party party party.
There are some decent food trucks.
There are a few upscale restaurants.
What do you do if you are staying in the area and you want to drink coffee and get some work done?
At the price of a long long walk, you can get to Wright Brothers Brew and Brew.
Other hotels have an in-house Starbucks etc etc etc with all the badness previously described.
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So by Rainey Street standards, Cafe 605 is the last housely home in an orc-filled wilderness.
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What do you get for your trip to Cafe 605?
a) Their own house brewed coffee. The espresso is a unique mix of half mud-half bitter. My own taste is for all out bitter, and my next-best favorite is all out mud. But I can go with their distinctive 50-50 hybrid.
b) Really really good food. The menu is limited but what they have is first rate.
My accompanist and I both had the BBQ brisket sandwich.
It was honest FATTY brisket!
When do you ever ever see a hotel serving fatty brisket?
The sauce was good and the whole sandwich came together nicely.
Much more interesting than the microwaved paninis available you-know-where.
c) A fantastic giant wood work table made from some huge tree trunk and varnished nicely. Sockets discretely available under the table at every other seat. Classy leather barstools to sit in with lots of cushioning to make them really comfortable. I could have worked there for hours and hours and hours.
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The person I was with said this was his favorite coffee house in Austin and that he wanted to come back.
You have to pay for Rainey Street parking if you are a townie wanting to visit - and the prices run towards the high side.
(But not to the extreme rip-off levels typical of the worst of the top-line hotels.)
However, if I was staying at the hotel, I would practically live in this establishment.
If I lived in a Rainey Street condo, Cafe 605 would be my home coffee shop for sure.
There is no reason why premium hotels have to have coffee shops that are as bad as they are.
The Hotel Van Zandt is schooling the rest of the industry in how to be cool.