A new café is taking shape around the remains of a historic façade in East Austin. Crews have poured the foundations and begun framing Urth Caffè at 1010 E. César Chávez St., months after the city halted demolition work of much of the 1880s house that once held Cenote. A separate bakery commissary is also under construction around the corner at 104 Medina St.
Urth Caffè is a Los Angeles café chain founded by Jilla and Shallom Berkman that specializes in organic heirloom coffee. Its menu elsewhere includes Spanish lattes, chocolate-pistachio croissants, and breakfast pizza topped with a poached egg. Renderings of the Austin restaurant show outdoor tables along the covered porch and on a patio facing East César Chávez Street.
At the November 4 Historic Landmark Commission briefing, Ingrid Gonzalez Featherston, a senior architect at MF Architecture, said crews plan to reinforce the surviving façade while keeping its original framing. The team plans to send the windows off-site for restoration and reinstall salvageable siding, replacing boards beyond repair with new wood milled to match.
The rendering of the César Chávez Street property shows Cenote’s familiar low roofline, covered porch, and tall windows alongside a new glass-fronted addition.
Cenote closed its original café in April 2025 after the property was sold and the business was bought out of its lease, Eater Austin reported. It reopened later that year at 1405 E. 7th St. In March 2026, the new owner’s crews demolished more of the house than the city had authorized, leaving only one wall standing, according to Austin Current. City inspectors found that the remaining wall was structurally unsound.
In an April briefing at the Historic Landmark Commission, the project team said years of commercial use, earlier additions, and makeshift utility work had caused so much internal deterioration that the house could no longer be preserved in full. The team said it planned to rebuild the space to meet modern restaurant standards while recreating historic details.
From Medina Street, a rendering shows the former Cenote’s bay window beside a new glass-fronted addition planned for Urth Caffè.Rendering courtesy of MF Architecture
City preservation staff trace the house to as early as 1887. The one-story home, with its full-width porch and decorative wood trim, housed the Cain family and later Anita Quintanilla, who ran a beauty salon there before moving the business down the street. In the 1990s, the Pozos family turned the house into a church.
Urth could open as early as spring of 2027. Haidar Properties, the South Texas restaurant operator that bought the property, is developing it as Urth Caffè’s Texas flagship. The company says it holds exclusive statewide development rights for the brand and also operates IHOP, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux franchises in the Rio Grande Valley.
At the same November 4 meeting, the Historic Landmark Commission indefinitely postponed a request to demolish the former Weather Up cocktail bar at 1808 E. César Chávez St. The circa-1930 building is visibly dilapidated, with boarded-up windows and exterior woodwork in need of repair. Preservation Austin has asked the commission to pursue historic zoning for the building, which once housed a barber shop, a beauty parlor, and a shoe repair shop. City staff listed November 17 as the date the demolition application would expire.
