Café Pacha

4618 Burnet Rd., Austin, TX - (512) 420-8758

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Posted By Michael Stern on November 13, 2002 8:37 PM

Café Pacha is a friendly little coffee house with a South American theme. In addition to beverages and food, it sells all sorts of Bolivian nick-nacks and decorative items, from art prints for hanging on the wall to small gourds for drinking ceremonial liqueurs. There are woven shawls and leather handbags, sweaters, and Café Pacha souvenir T-shirts.

The coffee is superb, from café con leche to rich-flavored espresso that is delicious by itself or as the basis for any number of fancy coffee drinks, including the best latte ever (hot or cold). Serious coffee hounds have their choice of drip-brewed or French-press coffee, the latter requiring about five extra minutes of cup-by-cup hand labor. The non-coffee beverage list includes smoothies that are a virtual meal unto themselves. To eat with one’s morning brew, our favorite pastry is apple pie – a fragile-crusted wonder with elegantly-sweetened fruit filling. Also, there are squares of sour cream coffee cake, muffins, and sweet bread. For more substantial eats, you can have a warm breakfast taco. At lunch, choices include chipotle mushroom tamales, Greek pasta salad, quinoa/tofu salad, a quiche of the day, and vegetable-topped pizza slices.

A lovely place to sit, read the paper, and converse, Café Pacha has a couple of short counters with stools and several tables with beautifully painted tops, on which these extraordinary drinks and food look especially pretty.

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Posted By Meg Chrisler on February 3, 2006 10:29 PM

In addition to always being a snooty place (and their occasional fixed price dinners are $28 with a high gratuity added on), their coffee has become absolute swill.

The atmosphere used to be charming and welcoming, and you could get decent food with a latte, and even bring your dog to the back porch. I am upset by how upscale they’ve become, and it’s irritating to see places like this try to be hip and full of attitude. But worst of all, the $3 cappuccino I recently bought was so bad I dumped it after three sips.

I’d gone there daily for years, yet I was never been treated as a “regular”, so I’m done with it. I've always felt the staff looked down on the clientele, and if the coffee is unsalvageable then what's the point? Pacha tries very hard to be hipper than thou, and I left that attitude behind a long time ago when I moved away from NYC. Fortunately there are other great neighborhood places I can walk to. So long, Pacha!

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