Flightpath Coffee House: Chillin’ in Hyde Park Since 1992

Outdoor patio seating at Flightpath Coffee House in Hyde Park

Guest article by Molly Morrow

As a woman from Seattle (okay, as a woman from a farming-valley-turned-shopping-mall that’s close enough to Seattle for me to lie without feeling bad), I can assure you that I know my way around a coffee shop. I have been in coffee shops resembling EuroDisney, coffee shops with dog balconies, coffee shops with and without a unifying central theme such as “bad art” or “bird music,” and coffee shops that looked like the vacation houses of stone-cold lunatics.

I have been in coffee shops so dimly lit and crowded with velveteen daybeds that I felt myself growing more Victorian, just staring at myself in the glass of the bakery case. I have been in thousands of coffee shops over the years, and I have judged them all without mercy.

That being said, let me tell you in the strictest of confidence: Flightpath Coffee House in Hyde Park is the single greatest coffee shop I’ve ever encountered. There are three reasons Flightpath is so great:

1. The quiet in the air,
2. The decor, and
3. The baristas behind the counter.

Let me break these compelling reasons down, one-by-one.

1/ Flightpath Is Always Quiet

It’s always quiet time at Flightpath

Always. Even when the place is packed wall-to-wall and couch-to-hairdryer-lamp with university students convulsing over take-home exams. They keep the music low. The cumulative voice of the crowd never breaks above a mild din. There has never been even the tiniest hint of an open mic or a band setting up in the corner.

Flightpath is the perfect place to go if you want to hear yourself think or get some writing done, instead of hopping from distraction to distraction while trying to ignore the noise around you. The apocalypse could be happening outside on Duval Street, and all you would hear inside Flightpath is the clink of change in the tip jar and the hum of the drink cooler. It’s a genuine modern-day miracle, the quiet that Flightpath maintains.

2/ Flightpath Has Delightful Decor

Flightpath even decorates the ceiling

I can’t get over this orange velvet chair in Flightpath’s bathroom

To sit in the middle of this cafe is to feel yourself immersed in a wrapping panorama of original, local art. Flightpath keeps the paintings going in a constant rotation of Austin artists, and I have yet to be disappointed with the quality of work displayed.

One morning I came in, and the walls were covered in stunning oil paintings of trees–nothing but green leaves and gnarled trunks. A little while ago, it was magazine collages in rhinestone frames. Today, it’s a series of surreal portraits by a fabulous artist named Iain. You’ll see Ronald Reagan and an elephant, a man with a leopard’s face, and a rabbit in watercolor.

The paintings on the ceiling near the front door never change, but that’s because they’re too charming to give up: a procession of vivid matadors and raging bulls, glowing like sequined cartoons against a black velvet sky.

3/ Flightpath Employs Spot-on Staff

Don’t be deceived by the understated business front; Flightpath is my favorite coffee shop in Austin

The baristas at Flightpath are possibly the friendliest, nicest people in the whole city of Austin by a factor of three (and Austin is already the nicest city I’ve lived in). One has curly hair and smiles like I imagine a young Mrs. Clause would smile if you were to offer to help her with her taxes. One has beautiful dreadlocks and a Grandpa sweater that actually says Grandpa on it.

They always ask me how my day is going and how I’m doing, and they seem to really mean it, no matter how long the line is. (In the morning, the line is always atrocious because they serve Taco Deli breakfast tacos.)

More Reasons Why Flightpath Is Great

Lamp made out of a hair dryer

Since I can’t stop with three, here are eight more reasons Flightpath is so great:

1. The coffee is freakishly good.
2. East Side Pies pizza.
3. 12 different kinds of snack bars.
4. Chrome tables and chairs stolen straight out of Don Draper’s kitchen.
5. The hairdryer lamp (a lamp made out of a freaking hair dryer?!).
6. Couches that look like they walked off the set of “Bewitched.”
7. The orange crushed-velvet chair I want to steal from the bathroom.
8. Open-air patio strung with porch lights made out of old CDs.

In short, Flightpath is the best coffee shop in Austin, which places it high on the list of best coffee shops in the world. If you haven’t been there already, you should go. And if you have, you should keep up the habit. It’s been here, waiting for you, since 1992. Back then, the town around it was nearly as quiet as the room within, so named because it sat in the flight path of passing planes. I’m frankly afraid to shine any more light on it, because it’s already quite the hip little shop.

But the truth is, it deserves all the spotlight it can get.

5011 Duval St. – Website

@theAustinot wants to know:

Have you been to Flightpath Coffee House in Hyde Park?

Molly Morrow is a writer from Seattle who moved to Austin because she was cold. You can find more of her writing here, and you can follow her on Twitter.