Austin Central Library Previews Cookbook Cafe With a New Coffee Cart

The Austin Central Library is teasing its future restaurant, Cookbook Cafe, with a new coffee and pastry cart, now open on the rooftop of the downtown flagship at 710 West Cesar Chavez Street. The full cafe and bar is coming sometime very soon in late June.

The coffee cart serves homemade pastries (orange rye muffins, passionfruit poundcake, and really big cookies) and drip coffee — those looking for espresso drinks will have to wait until the cafe opening.

Cookbook has reported it will serve dishes patched together from cookbooks available at the library, and it looks like the coffee cart is following suit. Saloni Mehra, the executive pastry sous chef for ELM, posted pictures of a giant cookie from a cookbook by James Beard award-winner Alice Medrich.

The massive downtown library, which opened in October, teamed up with the ELM Restaurant Group (which also runs 24 Diner, Fareground, Italic, Irene’s, and formerly Easy Tiger) for the future cafe.

The coffee cart is in service Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. ELM is also opening another location of 24 Diner at Rock Rose in the Domain Northside sometime soon, as well as in the Austin Bergstrom-International Airport.

Madeline Burrows

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