Borrowers and baked goods
East Austin café finally fills long-vacant spot at Central Library
The Central Library's café space is no longer vacant.
The Austin Public Library finally has a new restaurant at its Central location, filling a space that’s been empty for years: Café Crème, a longtime café on Oltorf Street in the East Riverside area, is opening its second location in the space that previously housed Cookbook Cafe. The library and the café both noted on social media May 29 that the café is ready for visitors.
"We’re so excited to bring our cozy vibes, coffee, and food to the heart of the city," the cafe says in an Instagram post.
Café Crème is a family-owned, French-Vietnamese restaurant and coffee shop known for cute latte art and a variety of crêpes. It has been operating in Austin since 2014.
The new library location promises cold brew, green tea lattes, and fresh pastries, but the announcement does not share a full menu. After a soft-opening period, the menu will also include breakfast tacos, sandwiches, and cocktails, they say.
Cookbook Cafe closed unceremoniously — and for months, ambiguously — in the first half of 2023. It had been open for about five years at that point, and was a popular, if not always busy choice for library patrons at lunch.
The Central Library is close to many downtown restaurants, especially Uchibā, Flower Child, and Torchy’s Tacos. However, most Second Street restaurants are still a bit of a walk away — four or five minutes each way really adds up on hotter days — and most are better suited for a leisurely meal than grab-and-go. Then after folks grab, there are few places to go, since the library only allows food in specific areas. Having a lunch option downstairs is both a big time-saver for people spending hours at the library, and a more comfortable alternative.
An Instagram post by Café Crème celebrates “months of hard work,” but it didn’t announce the location until its completion on May 20.
The Oltorf location is largely seen as a community space, with local art for sale on the walls, board games, a printing station, and even its own free exchange library, making it a natural choice for a public library.
The Central Austin Public Library is located at 710 W. César Chávez. The entrance to the café is around the back on the West Second Street side. At first, hours will be 7 am to 5 pm daily. Hours will later expand to 7 am to 9 pm daily.
The Homunculi lights the way with a frothy top layer.Photo by Brianna Caleri