Emmer & Rye
Kevin Fink cooks ground pork liver into dirty farro from Barton Springs Mill, then buries it under smoked lamb and confited pig head and trotter.1
Why go
Kevin Fink trained at The French Laundry and at noma, and he has run this room on house-milled heirloom grain, handmade pasta and a fermentation larder since 2015.12 The Green Star behind it rests on an audit: 90 to 95 percent of what the restaurant spends goes to farms inside Texas, the group's own no-till Trosi Farms among them, and the kitchen puts out more than a hundred different dishes a year.1
Fink says the sourcing is a set of questions, not a slogan. Every dish gets three: does it show off something indigenous or unique to the region, does it bring respect to an ingredient the market undervalues, does it solve a waste problem for a farmer, rancher or fisherman.1 In practice that means okra grown too big and woody comes back as seeds pressure-cooked into a pickled caviar and dried until they puff, and a farmer facing a freeze can call and get his cherry tomatoes taken at three stages of ripeness, the small ones fermented, the mid ones pickled, the big ones used fresh.1
He has stopped advertising any of it. Asked why, he told the Austin Chronicle: For us, it's how delicious, how flavorful [our menu] is. Life is so busy nowadays, you only get a couple of things that a restaurant is known for.
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Order this / avoid
- Order: the smoked lamb and pig head carnitas over dirty farro, which is the kitchen's own answer for its most sustainable dish. Head and trotters from Yonder Way Farm are confited and whipped into smoked Braune Farms lamb, the farro carries the ground liver, the squash is pickled Trombocino from the group's farm, and the yogurt is cultured in house from Milking Creamery Dairy.1
- Then the pasta, which is where the grain shows: rigatoni with fermented tomato and chili crisp, pappardelle with smoked wagyu beef ragu, and the house play on cacio e pepe.3 The beef carpaccio with fermented shiitake and beef garum and the tortelloni of smoked ricotta are the inspector's picks.2
- Oysters, if they are on: Texas Blackjack Point, cultivated rather than dredged off wild reefs, with a mignonette built from smoked watermelon and Jimmy Nardello peppers, both of which started as farm surplus.1
- Avoid: turning up for the rolling dim sum carts the restaurant opened with. Matthew Odam, who has watched the room for its whole decade, puts it flatly: the carts are gone and the ethos remains.3
What locals & experts say
- Matthew Odam put it in his 40 best Austin restaurants for 2025 and described the nerve it takes to cook this way:
You've gotta be confident to put out a buttermilk-spuma-capped roasted cabbage dish with sunshiny sections of watermelon, and a snapper crudo contrasting the sweet earthiness of golden beets and puckering blackberry.
He is also clear about where the room has landed after ten years, calling it a place that comforts guests more than it challenges them.3 - The MICHELIN inspector's write-up names the constants:
house-milled heirloom grains, handmade pastas, thoughtful fermentation and an unwavering commitment to Texas products.
2 - Kevin Fink, on what the sourcing costs and who should pay it, to the Austin Chronicle in January 2025:
If you want better farmers, you need to be investing in that.
4 - The shelf, scoped: a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand and a MICHELIN Green Star, both awarded in the inaugural 2024 Texas guide and both held in the 2025 selection. Austin had two Green Stars in 2024, this one and Dai Due.52
Good to know
- Hygiene, and this one needs saying carefully. Austin Public Health has one inspection for the kitchen, an 86 from 6 November 2024. That is comfortably above the ordinance's failing line at 70, so it is not a finding, and nothing newer has been published for this address, so treat the picture as incomplete.8
- One room, several siblings. Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group also runs Hestia, Canje, Ezov and Trosi Farms. They trade under their own names and nothing here is claimed for them.4
- Getting there: 51 Rainey St, sharing the address with a grocery, a whiskey bar and a pizzeria.2
Verdict
should-visit — Grain is the whole thesis and it has been since 2015. The kitchen mills heirloom grain in the building, runs it through a pasta list, and cooks ground pork liver into dirty farro from Barton Springs Mill under smoked lamb and confited pig head. Kevin Fink trained at The French Laundry and at noma, and the audit behind the Green Star puts 90 to 95 percent of the restaurant's spend with Texas farms, including the group's own no-till Trosi Farms. He asks three questions of every dish: does it show something indigenous to the region, does it lift an ingredient the market undervalues, does it solve a waste problem for a farmer or a fisherman. Matthew Odam, after a decade of watching it, writes that the dim sum carts are gone and the ethos is not, and that the room now comforts more than it challenges.