Barley Swine
The shiitake dumplings have outlasted every other dish on the menu: four soup dumplings of shiitake broth over scrambled eggs soft enough to pass for sauce, with a tiny rubber spatula so you can finish the bowl.3
Why go
Bryce Gilmore puts the brief on his own front page: We have fun cooking with bold flavors through multiple courses, all the things that we as chefs enjoy eating. Our seasonal tasting menu is inspired by the ingredients from our local farmers and we're just trying not to mess them up.
1 Nicolai McCrary tested that from the floor. Ask anyone here where something came from. You get a story about their relationship with the farmer.3
This is the second act of the 2009 Odd Duck trailer. Gilmore opened Barley Swine about a year later, down the same stretch of South Lamar. It has since moved to a Burnet Road suite in Brentwood.3 Austin Monthly's line on the bricks-and-mortar Odd Duck is that it picks up where Barley Swine began, before Gilmore switched it to a planned, prix-fixe tasting menu
.8 It holds One MICHELIN Star, awarded in the inaugural 2024 Texas guide and retained in 2025. The inspector reads the cooking as a Southwestern palette, drawing on Mexican and Southern traditions.5
There is one menu. It runs eight to ten courses at $125 a head, and the kitchen turns it over about every month.43
Order this / avoid
- The menu decides for you, so the choices are the add-ons. Take the shiitake dumplings, which sit outside the tasting menu.3 The Black River caviar with dashi semifreddo and a potato waffle cookie, and the smoked Akaushi beef rib with gochujang barbecue, are the other supplements the kitchen lists.1
- Summer 2026, as printed: cured tuna crudo with fermented watermelon jam, jalapeno, basil and ponzu; chipotle yellowtail with butter fumet, eggplant escabeche and okra croutons; smoked pork shoulder with creamed corn, peach, cubanelle and citrus caramel; a 30-plus-day dry-aged Akaushi ribeye with mushroom cream and shishito; peach frangipane with Texas tarragon ice cream.1
- Where to sit: the bar. It is McCrary's favorite seat in the house, with the kitchen in front of you and a bartender walking you through the pairing.3
- Avoid: treating it as a quick dinner. McCrary's own line is that a meal here is not short and somehow feels even longer than it is.3
What locals & experts say
- Matthew Odam ranked it the No. 1 restaurant in Austin for 2025 and said the meal was the best he had eaten in the city in 25 years. On the run of plates:
I felt like a baseball fan or color analyst scared to utter the words 'perfect game.' I had never experienced that at a restaurant before: the desire for a meal to not be spoiled, for the subsequent plates to match the previous ones, to reach perfection.
He describes the carnitas of head and shoulder meat over eggplant mole as fifteen years of the restaurant's evolution on a plate.2 - Nicolai McCrary scored it 9.1 for The Infatuation, which puts it 15th in the city and third among Austin tasting menus. He vouches for the sourcing by telling you to test it:
Ask anyone at the restaurant where something came from, and they can probably tell you a whole story about their personal relationship with the farmer.
3 - The MICHELIN inspector names hiramasa with caramelized apple as the opening tease, then wood-fired grouper with a creamy curry and wagyu tartare, ribeye and rib cap with crispy black garlic. The inspector also records the kitchen's habits: crockery bought at Goodwill, produce grown on site, rainwater collected for the garden.5
- The rest of the shelf, scoped: a James Beard Outstanding Hospitality semifinalist nod in the 2026 cycle, which went no further, since Austin took no finalists and no winners that year. Bryce Gilmore won Chef in the Austin Chronicle's 2026 Best of Austin, a public readers poll, which credits him for Barley Swine and Odd Duck together.6
Good to know
- Dinner only, and the room is small. Service runs Thursday through Sunday, and it starts earlier at the weekend than on a weeknight.1
- Read the dietary policy before you book. Vegetarian, pescatarian and gluten-free menus come on request. Vegan and keto requests are declined, and the kitchen says chiles, alliums and mushrooms sit at the core of the recipes and cannot come out. Some allergens cannot be worked around in certain seasons, because of the sourcing.1
- Hygiene, and this gap is worth naming. The city register holds no inspection for this business, though it does inspect two of its neighbors in the same building, at suites 100 and 200, and the guide places Barley Swine at suite 400. This is a fixed address, so the coverage gap that explains Austin's food trailers does not apply here, and no record is not a clean bill of health.9
- Getting there: 6555 Burnet Rd, suite 400, in Allandale on the Brentwood side.5
Verdict
must-visit — Book it, and take the earliest Sunday seating you can get, because the kitchen knocks $30 off the ticket for the first half hour of that service. That is the only lever on the price. If you want Bryce Gilmore's cooking a la carte, that is Odd Duck. Come here when you want him to plan the night, and clear the evening for it.