During a recent weekday lunch at Café Moustache, I picked idly at the mesclun salad in front of me as my friend Judy poked at her own bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo. The restaurant was empty save for us and one table containing an older woman who was slowly reading the most recent New Yorker from cover to cover. It was deathly quiet inside. Our waiter hovered, having nothing else to do. It made it difficult to discuss the poor salad we were contemplating.
Troy Fields
Café Moustache should focus on dishes like the mussels Provençal with chorizo.
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Hours: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to midnight Fridays, 5 p.m. to midnight Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays.
Happy hour hors d'oeuvres: $4
Tomato salad: $7.95
Duck quesadillas: $9.95
Truffle risotto: $16.95
Braised short ribs: $24
Steak and frites: $27.95
Three-course weekday lunch: $15.95
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Covered in what seemed like nothing except olive oil, the half-wilted lettuce and its anemic cherry tomato nubs were a sorry way to start our three-course lunch. It was completely devoid of flavor, but at least the gumbo was picking up the slack — somewhat.
Gumbo was certainly an odd thing to see as the soup of the day at what is presented as a more traditionally French restaurant. But I should have learned from previous visits that sometimes Café Moustache's attitude is that of, "Screw it. Let's put something Tex-Mex on the menu." It's this halfhearted approach to the food at the former So Vino that's left me cold across four different visits.
The gumbo wasn't bad, per se. But it wasn't striking either, with its thin broth that didn't look as if it had ever seen a roux. And it was simply terribly out of place. Ditto the romano-crusted chicken that was one of the three entrée options for the day. An Italian-American hybrid dish at a French restaurant that also serves the occasional French-Tex-Mex concoction? I am not convinced that Café Moustache knows what it wants to be.
And after tasting the romano-crusted chicken — dry inside and bland outside, covered oddly with a butter sauce that seemed to consist of only butter — I'm not convinced that Café Moustache knows how to prepare good food on a consistent basis, either. My trout meunière suffered the same butter-drenched fate as the chicken — no white wine to be found there — and was aggressively fishy tasting. Trout isn't the mildest fish, but it normally doesn't taste like a wharf.
Dessert arrived, and it was a relief to have the pitiful entrées taken away. But oh, what a replacement came in their place: Judy's Black Forest crepe clearly pre-made, lifeless and cold and containing equally saccharine amounts of mass-produced chocolate syrup and bottled cherries. My chocolate pot de crème was better, but the Jell-O Temptations six-packs at my local H-E-B are cheaper and taste just as good.
During this time, I watched as John — a semi-homeless man who lives just down the street — ambled into the Café Moustache parking lot, bag from a convenience store in hand. He decided to take his lunch in one of the parking spaces, sat down and began "prepping" his cup of Ramen by smashing the noodles into bits with his hand and tilting the cup up to eat them like snack mix.
He had a happy grin on his face the entire time, content to eat his Ramen noodle dust in the sunshine. And all I could think was, "John is having a better lunch than I am today, and he paid a lot less."
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I confess to not understanding Café Moustache at all. I would say that I don't understand how it is consistently busy, but that question is answered by the thrifty happy hour that it holds from 5 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. And this is easily the best time to go: The food and wine are inexpensive, and the crowd nicely fills out the sleek space.
Not much has changed, interiorwise, since owners Manfred Jachmich and Elizabeth Abraham changed concepts last year and transformed So Vino into Café Moustache. The soaring ceilings and unique architectural details are still in place, as is the generously sized bar area. And during these weekday happy hours, the place buzzes with a warm and inviting vibe.
During dinner, however, that warmth seems to vanish as people retreat back to their homes or to other restaurants. The dinner service speaks for itself: Why stick around for a nearly $30 plate of steak-frites that's gristly and tough? No, the $4 appetizers — which are more inspired anyway — and $5 glasses of wine are the draw here.
And if that were all that Café Moustache was offering, I would probably love the place. What's not to love about a casual spot offering small plates of duck-Cognac pâté with dill mustard or mussels Provençal with chorizo? Montrose can and would support a restaurant of this measure.
What it won't support is a $15.95-a-person three-course lunch with insipid, poorly prepared dishes that appear to have been transported across time and space from Jachmich's original Café Moustache, which experienced its heyday during the 1980s. Not when restaurants like Feast, Dolce Vita and Indika are doing some of the best, most creative cooking in the city right across the street — and often for the same price. You can even get far better crepes a few blocks away at Melange Creperie.
