Chapulín Cantina
Tlayudas, moles and large-format plates including lamb barbacoa and braised pork shank, against a deep mezcal and agave list.1
Why go
The room closed on 28 February 2026, so read this as a record.2 It was a Oaxacan kitchen installed in the South Congress space that had housed Enoteca Vespaio until 2022, opened by the same owners with minor interior work, and it ran ceviches, tostadas, tlayudas and moles alongside the large-format braises.1 Crickets were on the menu, which is what the name means and the clearest signal the kitchen sent about how literally it meant Oaxaca.
Ryan Samson and Daniel Brooks bought Vespaio from its founders in 2018 and ran both rooms, and Brooks also owns Licha's Cantina. They opened a Texas-inflected Italian restaurant, Vespa Rossa, in Dripping Springs in the summer of 2025 to carry the Vespaio line forward.2
Order this / avoid
- What it was for: the large-format dishes. Lamb barbacoa and braised pork shank were the plates built for a table, and the tlayudas and moles were the regional argument.1
- Avoid: nothing to name. The room is closed and there is no order left to get wrong.
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation Austin, Raphael Brion, 4 August 2022: covered without a rating, under the outlet's stated policy of only scoring places where you can eat a full meal and of holding back on rooms it wants to revisit. The write-up records the menu and the agave list and stops short of a judgment on the cooking.1
- The owners, Ryan Samson and Daniel Brooks, on closing both rooms:
As South Congress continues to evolve, we felt like this was the right moment to close this chapter on our own terms.
2 - The record is thin here. No Austin critic published an evaluative review of this kitchen that we could find, so there is no line about the cooking to quote and none is invented. The Austin American-Statesman is paywalled and Austin Monthly could not be read at all, so neither is claimed over.
Good to know
- Closed: 28 February 2026, on the same day as Vespaio next door. The January 2026 announcement gives the day and month without the year, and the year follows from the timing of the report.2
- Hygiene, no record under this name: the Austin Public Health register holds nothing called Chapulín Cantina, which is missing data rather than a finding.3
Verdict
listed — Closed on 28 February 2026 alongside its sister restaurant Vespaio, so this is a record. It ran Oaxacan cooking out of the old Enoteca Vespaio room on South Congress: ceviches, tostadas, tlayudas and moles, with large-format lamb barbacoa and braised pork shank for a table, and a deep mezcal and agave list behind it. The chapulines the room was named for were on the menu. The Infatuation covered it without a rating, and no critic ever published a judgment on the cooking, which is the honest ceiling on what can be said.