1886 Café & Bakery sits in the grandeur of the distinguished Driskill Hotel. Unfortunately, haphazard execution and clumsy service has brought the place down, and it’s no longer such a downtown go-to. The lounge is a much better delivery system for Driskill’s charms.

The space is exceedingly charming: a high-ceilinged dining room with gorgeous dark wood paneling and leadlight windows; an immaculate open kitchen with gleaming copper pots hanging from the ceiling. The baked goods are fine, but the dinner menu slinks into the shadows of cynical hotel-restaurant fare like angel hair pasta with grilled shrimp, grilled salmon wraps, and unaccomplished meat-and-two-veg preps. The wine list is equally cynical, although there are a couple of decent Texas wines and older Italians among feebler attempts.

Sadly, breakfast dishes are faltering, too. Scrambled eggs are flaky and potatoes desiccated. Our old favorite, the “Austin, Texas” eggs Benedict, has gone the way of the dodo, thanks to too many complaints about greasy chorizo gravy. You might wonder why a kitchen would do away with a problematic (but popular) dish rather than correct it. Perhaps they’re not sure they can. Neither are we.