Better Half Coffee & Cocktails.

Better Half Coffee & Cocktails

The honey butter fried chicken biscuit is an open homage to Whataburger, cooked by a chef called off the line at Josephine House.3

Why go

Matthew Bolick and the brothers Matt and Grady Wright met over a coffee bar at Frank, opened Brew & Brew together in 2013, and in early 2018 took a lot on West Fifth that came with a drab Enterprise Rent-A-Car building at the front and a Quonset hut hidden behind it, uprooted years earlier from Camp Mabry.3 The rental office became Better Half; the hut became Hold Out Brewing two years later, which is a separate business with its own door.3 Bolick called chef Rich Reimbolt off the line at Josephine House to run the food, and Reimbolt built a menu of comfort cooking with the technique turned up, including the honey butter fried chicken biscuit that nods straight at Whataburger.3 Bolick learned the trade young, in Cafe Matthew, the Fort Worth-area restaurant his mother Sally named after him and where he was photographed at two years old in a waiter's uniform.3

Order this / avoid

• The honey butter fried chicken biscuit. The kitchen's stated homage, and the clearest thing on the menu about what this place is for.3
• The breakfast sandwich. Hash brown inside it, smoked paprika aioli, arugula, and the sausage patty is worth adding.2
• The Lighter Half salad with pulled fried chicken on the side. Arugula and watercress with shaved carrots, beets, avocado and sunflower sprouts under a creamy lemon tahini dressing, and the chicken comes as a perfect jumble of crunchy crust and salty, tender meat.1
• Greens & Grains if you want the vegetable end of the kitchen: braised greens, mushrooms in a tamari broth, wheat and rye berries, puffed wild rice, a fried egg and marinated tempeh.1
• The cauliflower tots with beet ketchup, which is the patio order.2
• Avoid: treating the name as the whole offer. The espresso bar is real and the kitchen is the reason to stay past it.1

What locals & experts say

• Austin Monthly, Megan Kimble, August 2018 issue, verbatim: Better Half is the kind of restaurant Austin needs more of. On the grain bowl, also verbatim: it was well worth eating out for, with its lingering, deep smokiness from the mushrooms and filling mix of warm greens and nutty tempeh.1
• Best New Restaurant, Austin Monthly, 2018. The magazine's editors picked it; no public vote was involved. The write-up on the redfish with yuzu dashi, okra and peppers, red pepper and pecan hummus and crisped garlic: dishes like it make it clear the kitchen could compete with any upscale spot in town if it chose to.2
• Larry McGuire, McGuire Moorman Hospitality, quoted in Austin Monthly in March 2021: a great food scene needs that kind of scrappiness and cleverness. They're showing that great food and great design doesn't have to be expensive.3
• No rated review exists. The Infatuation's Austin review index and its coffee and brunch guides carry nothing for this venue.4

Good to know

• Hygiene: own record, nothing to disclose. Austin Public Health registers the address as Better Half Bar, with six inspections since October 2023: 93 in April 2026, then 84, 83, 83, 85 and 89 going back. Nothing below 70, so there is no finding, and the newest reading is the best of the six.5
• Hold Out is a different permit. The brewery behind the building holds two separate facility ids of its own. All three are inspected on the same days because they share a lot, and none of the brewery's numbers describes this kitchen.5
• Format: walk in, all day, from the espresso bar through lunch to cocktails. The patio takes dogs and children and there is parking on the lot, which is unusual this close to West Sixth.2
• Getting there: 406 Walsh St, just off West Fifth and west of Lamar.1

Verdict

could-visit — An all-day room on the West Fifth lot that also holds Hold Out Brewing, cooking Rich Reimbolt's version of diner food: a honey butter fried chicken biscuit built as an open Whataburger homage, a breakfast sandwich with the hash brown inside it, and a redfish with yuzu dashi and pecan hummus that shows what the kitchen can do when it wants to. Austin Monthly named it a Best New Restaurant in 2018 and its reviewer wrote that the kitchen could compete with any upscale spot in town if it chose to. What it does not have is a rated review from The Infatuation or anyone else who scores restaurants in this city, and the newest published account of the food is five years old, which caps it. Go if you are in the neighborhood and want one room that covers coffee, lunch and a cocktail.