The Counter Cafe

Expecting the unexpected from the little dive that isn't really a dive at all

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, June 04, 2009

In all those years that the late GM Steakhouse occupied the mini-diner across North Lamar Boulevard from where BookPeople is now, I never stopped there. And when the Counter Cafe opened in the same spot a few years ago, dressed up with some landscaping and a cleaned-up Coca-Cola marquee sign, I wondered how anybody could make a living from such a tiny space.

But it's become hard to miss the big noise coming from the little dive, which, it turns out, is not a dive at all but the home of serious diner food made with fresh ingredients by people who are completely accountable for what they do. That happens when your place is hardly more than 700 square feet and customers are close enough to tap you on the shoulder while you wash their dishes or scramble their eggs.

Hold on, though, because eggs are just a small part of the attraction here. Sure, you can score them fried, scrambled, poached, Benedict-ified and rolled up in a tortilla. The coolest dishes are the ones you don't expect: crab cakes, hanger steak, grilled quail, oysters. There's nothing quite like an early lunch of six big, polenta-battered oysters fried hot and crumbly on fresh greens with red onions, capers and robust tomato dipping sauce ($12).

The Counter Burger makes a statement with an assertively sweet, buttery bun so big it forms a toasty halo around the beef, like a toddler trying on granddad's porkpie hat. Draped with melted Cheddar, the Rubenesque hand-formed patty works in juicy accord with Bibb lettuce, red onion and ripe tomato for a burger that can stand with the best in town. At $9, even with a side of euphoric sweet-potato fries, it should, right? But this is personable, fast waiter service with coffee refills, not just a walk-up counter; worth the surcharge.

On the breakfast side, we split a big pancake with so many blueberries it was like eating a jelly doughnut. That's never a bad thing, even when it costs $5.

Even a pedestrian pimiento-cheese sandwich gets extreme treatment here: $8 worth of melted Cheddar and pepper-sweet pimiento with tomatoes and lettuce on crunchy-grilled nine-grain bread. The ginger-carrot soup (somewhere between a pulpy juice-shop concoction and a warm smoothie) that we picked as a side dish vaulted this grown-up grilled cheese platter beyond the diner walls: a sweet and grainy purée of carrots brightened with heat from the ginger - lots of ginger.

The Counter Cafe's roots as a diner dive aren't completely bleached. No amount of air conditioning can cool you down when 25 customers, half a dozen cooks and waiters and an arsenal of burners, broilers and fryers hit full stride in a room the size of a two-car garage.

By the same token, you will smell like the Counter Cafe the rest of the day, which, if you have to smell like something, is not the worst thing to smell like: good food, good company and the intangible aroma of being in on one of Austin's little secrets.

msutter@statesman.com; 912-5902

The Counter Cafe

626 N. Lamar Blvd. 708-8800, www.the

countercafe.com

Rating: 7.6 out of 10

Hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily

Prices: Breakfast (always available) ranges from $3.50 for a breakfast taco to $13 for hanger steak and eggs. Between those ranges, choices include two eggs with a biscuit and sausage or bacon for $8, eggs Benedict for $10 and crab cakes with eggs for $12.50. Lunch prices range from $6.50 for half a pimiento-cheese sandwich and a side to $13 for hanger steak and fries with a salad. Main courses average $10.50. Salads are $7.

Payment: All major cards

Bar: The cafe serves a handful of bottled beers, plus mimosas and bellinis ($6.50).

Wheelchair access: Yes

What the rating means: The average of weighted scores for food, service, atmosphere and value