This Charming Cafe in Texas Is the Chic Brunch Spot You Never Knew You Needed

In Texas, brunch is where everything happens. It’s where you meet up with your aunts and uncles, friends, cousins, grandparents, nieces and nephews, in-laws, and more.

Well, what if brunch was prepared by a gourmet chef? Buttermilk Cafe in New Braunfels, Texas, takes brunch to the next level–all the home cooking you love, but with an elevated style.

If you’ve longed for a taste of the high life, but with the familiar smells, sights, and sounds of home, this may be the place for you.

Buttermilk Cafe is dressed in the kind of farmhouse decor you’d save on TikTok. Walls are lined with roosters, plate racks, wicker baskets, and more.

Your waiter or waitress brings out the orders for your table, and the plates are adorned with designs, bright colors, and patterns. They’re like those dishes you’ve wanted to buy, the ones you’d bookmarked.

This cafe is more than a regular brunch place to take your friends or family. It’s a place to reconnect with your love of the Texas chic lifestyle.

It’s a date!

So, what’s on the menu? Quite a bit, actually.

Buttermilk Cafe’s breakfast menu has four main sections: Cafe Breakfast Classics; Create Your Own Omelet; Cafe Griddle; and Breads, Hot Cereal, Grains, and Fruit.

Closer to lunch? No problem. The cafe’s lunch menu includes starters, soups, salads, sandwiches, hot lunch entrees, and sides.

Already know what you want? The cafe doesn’t offer reservations, so be sure to allow plenty of time to get to the restaurant and be ready for your turn at a table.

Buttermilk Cafe’s located in the Common Market mall in New Braunfels, so buffer in some extra minutes to find parking in the mall near the cafe for you and your party. The cafe is often busy in the mid-to-late mornings, and its busiest days are Saturdays, Wednesdays, and Mondays.

The cafe’s hours are 7 AM to 2 PM Mondays through Saturdays (closed on Sundays). If there’s a holiday coming up, call ahead to check if they’ll be open or not (and maybe how busy they might be on different days of the week, around the holiday).

With more of a chef-style menu, there’s an elevated mood to the cafe’s items (and pricing). Make sure to plan for $15-20 (or more) on each item in your group’s order. And note that a 20% gratuity is automatically added for groups of 5 or more. Alright, time to make memories!

Let’s sift through the menus’ main sections, and uncover what you might find you absolutely love.

Let’s get breakfast!

Under Cafe Breakfast Classics, there’s your classic Cafe Breakfast ($14), with eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits or toast, and potatoes or grits.

One positive about Buttermilk Cafe is their attention to dietary needs, restrictions, allergies, likes and dislikes, and preferences.

Take, for example, their Cafe Breakfast. There’s an option to do a chicken sausage patty, or to substitute bone-in ham steak for $3.

There’s more customization than you may find elsewhere, and it’s a true asset–especially if your group is really hoping to find what they like best.

You can opt for the Broken Yolk classic, with eggs on grilled panini bread, or a simple Country Breakfast, with eggs, bacon, and toast or biscuits.

If you love avocado, you can get the Avocado Toast ($11), or go for an option with jalapenos, such as the Good Morning Migas (also $11), with eggs, beans, and tortillas.

If you’re like me, you’re looking for the quiche. There’s a Breakfast Strata, with eggs, panini bread croutons (what a nice touch!), green onion, tomato, bacon crumbles, and cheese.

If you like to stick to what you know, and look forward to that first bite, there’s a Chicken Fried Steak and Eggs, and a Grilled Pork Loin and Eggs.

Something you won’t find at just any brunch spot is the Coastal Breakfast ($20) — a conversation starter that might just impress your friends or in-laws.

The Coastal Breakfast has tail-on shrimp, jalapenos, lobster sauce, a toasted panini, tomatoes, and green onions. If it’s calling to you, answer.

When you go to brunch, do you beeline for the make-your-own-omelet section? If so, there’s a lot of variety for you to make your choices.

Buttermilk Cafe has a Create Your Own Omelet section ($14) on their breakfast menu, including lists of cheeses, vegetables, and meats (adding ingredients costs $0.99 each).

Wishing to pair one of these dishes with a nice cup of coffee? Buttermilk Cafe’s coffee is so popular that they’ve got their own line of coffee grounds you can buy and take home with you. If you’re planning an outing, that may even be a nice parting gift for your group.

Let’s move on to the Cafe Griddle part of the cafe’s breakfast menu … which may just have you smelling the butter and hearing the sizzle, as you read.

The good news is that, at Buttermilk Cafe, all dishes under the Cafe Griddle title are served with sweet cream butter and warm syrup. It’s a nice touch to give a nod to the cafe’s name, Buttermilk, with these sticky additions to your experience.

It’s those little things, like having sweet cream butter and syrup, that make a difference in the atmosphere of a place, especially tied to the name (that’s one thing people remember!).

For Cafe Griddle items, the menu has a reminder to ask about gluten-free options. If you’re gluten-free, or someone in your party is, be sure to ask about it!

Here, you have your classics, like Buttermilk Pancakes or Waffles (who can go wrong with those?).

A standout item is the Grilled Banana Bread ($10) — not something you’ll find on every brunch menu, but likely a taste you remember: warm out of the oven, filling the kitchen. The smell out of the oven, as you were growing up (or last week, at your sister’s house).

The Grilled Banana Bread is served up with banana walnut syrup and topped with powdered sugar. (Note that, if you or your party have any nut allergies, or cross-contamination concerns, to call ahead before your visit, or to ask your waiter or waitress to double-check.)

There’s French Toast, but with a twist, of course. 

The French Toast features wheat berry bread, powdered sugar, and strawberries. A sweet treat for a morning with friends or family!

Of course, we can’t miss out on Chicken and Waffle ($15), a staple here in Texas and in the South. If you haven’t ordered it yet, but noticed the trend, give it a try.

Last, but not least, are the breads, hot cereal, grains, and fruit, a section you may want to bookmark if you’d like to quietly make a few healthy choices, even on an outing with the group.

There’s toast, whole-wheat bagels, English muffins, or granola. Buttermilk Cafe has a couple options for oatmeal (more like splurges, though), including Whole-Grain Steel-Cut Oatmeal ($10), with brown sugar, sweet cream butter, toast or biscuits, and blueberries, or Baked Oatmeal ($6), with carrots, apples, cranberries, orange juice, brown sugar, eggs, pecans, and cream.

Some cafes have just one or two types of fruits in a tiny cup, but at Buttermilk Cafe, you can actually customize your fresh fruit, yourself!

The cafe has fruits, by season, such as red seedless grapes, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, bananas, and oranges. If you have certain fruits you like more than others (we all do), you can get a 2 oz bullet of berries, or a side, cup, or bowl of mixed fruits, strawberries, or mixed berries, by themselves.

Even with a lengthy breakfast menu, Buttermilk Cafe also offers a substantial lunch menu, for those who are more into the lunch part of “brunch.”

Let’s go for lunch!

Sandwiches, soups, salads, and starters are a common part of brunch restaurants or cafes. But one thing that sets Buttermilk Cafe apart is the hot lunch entrees.

In these entrees, there’s a Grilled Salmon Fillet ($18), with lobster or creole sauce, a Lightly Breaded Gulf Shrimp ($20), or a Grilled Gulf Shrimp (also $20) on skewers.

Other entrees (each $16), that come with 3 sides, are Meatloaf, with a grilled peach and sweet peach tomato sauce; Chicken Livers, dusted with flour and topped with gravy; and Calves Liver, with onions and gravy.

If you prefer to go for the classics, there is a Grilled Pork Loin, with apple cranberry chutney; Hamburger Steak, with onions, mushrooms, and gravy; and Chicken and Dumplings.

If you’ve never had catfish with a crispy cornmeal crust, you may want to go for the Cornmeal Crusted Striped Catfish (bonus: hush puppies!).

Sides are your typical mashed potatoes, caesar salad, grits, jasmine rice, french fries, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, and more.

Beyond the classics, you’ll also find sweet potato casserole, spinach salad, fried green tomatoes, cornbread stuffing, sweet potato fries, black-eyed peas, and more.

If brunch is your go-to for meetups, family reunions, friends trips, and more, Buttermilk Cafe may be another to add to your list of places to check out and explore together.

Visit their website or Instagram for current hours and menu details, and use this map to find your way to this New Braunfels gem that’s been serving up elevated Texas brunch at its finest.

Where: 1324 East Common Street, New Braunfels, TX 78130

Whether you’re belly-laughing with your cousin over the past, or chuckling as your nieces race up to the table, you’re sure to find a new memory made, and captured, at Buttermilk Cafe.

After all, it’s right there in the name — the sweet cream butter of life is the relationships we keep and the laughs we share, across the table.