Fish Shop
Justin Huffman buys his saltwater in California and has oysters called Little Savages farmed for this restaurant alone.1 The thing people order most is a Filet-O-Fish riff that is not on the menu.5
Why go
Huffman cooked in Austin kitchens for years and met his wife and co-owner Nicole Rossi at Justine's.1 The card runs three coastlines, and Nicolai McCrary lays them out: The menu pulls inspiration from coastal areas like the Pacific Northwest, New England, and Ireland, so you'll find everything from a Dungeness crab roll and creamy clam chowder to a crudo medley inspired by San Francisco's legendary Swan Oyster Depot.
5 Matthew Odam reads the same plates as geography: A velvety crudo dish sheened with oil and dotted capers places one in the former, while a creamy crab roll spilling from a toasted bun locates you in the latter.
2 The Texas half is the part that surprises him, a trio of grilled shrimp on mole pipian and a pozole verde special with seafood through it.2 Huffman's supplier calls him with what came in, which is where the Half Moon Bay spot prawns and the lobster ice cream come from.4
Order this / avoid
- The Filet-O-Fish, which is off the menu and has to be asked for.
It's a very good sandwich, with a thick fish filet fried to a crispy finish.
5 - Crudo a la Swan, the Swan Oyster Depot homage,
dressed simply in olive oil, vinegar, shallots, and capers.
5 - Little Savages by the dozen, the oysters grown for this restaurant and nobody else.1
- The burger, the one plate three critics agree on. Texas Monthly calls it a spectacular Wagyu burger, Eater knows it as the Le Beef burger Huffman brought over from his pop-up, and Odam calls it
one of the city's best burgers, tasting like the imagined McDonald's of your childhood.
142 - Avoid the conservas. McCrary:
The conservas section, billed as 'just like the canned stuff, but better,' feels unfinished—tiny tin bowls priced like entrées, with uneven results.
5 - Avoid ordering peel-and-eat shrimp by the plate.
These are reasonably large, but that doesn't mean they're worth nearly $4.50 a piece.
5
What locals & experts say
- Paula Forbes put it on Texas Monthly's 10 Best New Restaurants for 2026, the only Austin room on the list, in an edition she opens by calling the year
lackluster one for Texas restaurants. . . Restaurant experiences that feel truly worth it, that have the power to wow, are hard to come by. But they're out there.
16 - Matthew Odam ranked it third among the new Austin openings of 2025 for the Statesman, and put it fourth on his 2026 seafood list, where he writes that the room
looks like it would be right at home in San Francisco or Portland, Maine.
32 - Nicolai McCrary rated it 6.5 for The Infatuation, the low mark on this page, under a headline saying the menu does not always hit the mark.
Fish Shop shines best when they lean into homage: the Swan-style crudos are great, the Filet-O-Fish riff swims laps around its nostalgic counterpart, and the Big Mac analog has real charm.
Then the other half of it:But when the menu veers into original creations, the results aren't quite as dazzling.
5 - Eater gave it the Best New Restaurant award for 2025 and added it to the 38 essential Austin restaurants in the summer of 2026.4
Good to know
- The weekday happy hour, in the late afternoon, is where the same oysters get affordable. McCrary on the rest of the card:
it's expensive—the kind of place where a single peel-and-eat shrimp is almost the same price as bread service.
5 - Nicole Rossi pours the martinis, under her grandfather's taxidermied marlin.4
- The drinks are reliable. Hurricanes, martinis, salty dogs and painkillers,
and they're consistently solid.
5 - Austin Public Health has no record for this restaurant, though six other businesses in the same building at 1401 E 6th St are registered, so the city's scores cannot tell you anything about it either way.8
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Ommar new best rest rec". That is critic Omar Mamoon, and Jeff is repeating a recommendation from him. I haven't found which list it came from.
Verdict
should-visit — Go for the raw bar and the sandwiches and let somebody else argue about the tins. Order the off-menu Filet-O-Fish, the crudo a la Swan and a dozen Little Savages, and if there are two of you add the burger, which three separate critics have now singled out. The peel-and-eat shrimp at nearly $4.50 each is where this bill gets away from you, and McCrary's 6.5 is a fair warning that the original dishes are not yet as good as the homages. Come at the weekday happy hour and the same room costs a lot less.