a big group

Destination · Texan · South Lamar · $$$

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Cast-iron cornbread is permanently on the menu, usually under green onion butter, and the chicken hearts come glazed in mole and doused in masa gravy.

Destination · BBQ · East Austin · $$$

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Franklin's brisket gets salt, pepper and nothing else, then smoke in an offset from split post oak that Chief Firewood trucks in from Smithville.

Destination · BBQ · Austin · $$$

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The beef cheeks get a salt and pepper bark, four hours of post oak smoke, then a finish in beef tallow confit.

Destination · Central Texas barbecue with a Louisiana turn · Sprinkle Valley · $$

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Holden Fulco cures pork coppa for a week in salt, brown sugar, fennel and mustard seed, smokes it, then glazes it with cane syrup, Creole mustard, orange juice and pepper jelly.

Destination · BBQ · Northwest Austin · $$$

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Bates glazes the pork belly burnt ends with peach tea, and Texas Monthly's Daniel Vaughn says the tea takes center stage while the glaze stays off sweet.

Destination · Mexican · East Sixth · $$$

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The mole negro over the duck confit flautas runs on three chiles, ancho, mulato and chipotle, with chocolate made in the building from toasted sesame and sunflower seeds.

Destination · Caribbean, Guyanese-led · East Sixth · $$$

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Tavel Bristol-Joseph cooked pastry for Emmer & Rye and Hestia for years before he opened the room where he cooks Guyana.

Destination · Pizza, pub food · Bouldin Creek

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The core five here are all low-ABV lagers and ales, built to be drunk in sequence.

Solid · Restaurant · South Lamar · $$

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Bob Armstrong Dip is queso souped up with crumbled taco beef and guacamole, built in the seventies for a Texas Land Commissioner who ate here, and trademarked by the restaurant in 2015.

Solid · Modern American · Holly, East Austin · $$$

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The birthday cake ice cream sandwich puts a thick slab of vanilla between two confetti cookies that stay soft and slightly doughy straight out of the freezer.

Solid · BBQ · North Lamar, Highland · $$

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Lance Kirkpatrick learned the pits under Bobby Mueller in Taylor, and he runs this one with Ewan Hardeman.

Solid · BBQ · Bouldin Creek · $$

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The beef rib runs close to a pound and a half, and the Blacks smoke every bit of the meat on site.

Solid · BBQ · Lockhart · $$

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When the business moved half a mile up the road in 1999, Roy Perez and the Schmidts shovelled the burning coals out of the old pits into a steel wash tub and dragged it up the street to light the new ones.

Solid · Seafood · East Austin · $$$

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Justin Huffman buys his saltwater in California and has oysters called Little Savages farmed for this restaurant alone.

Solid · Bar · Austin

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The house list runs 53 classic cocktails, filed by the era they came from, starting before 1880.

Solid · Thai and Mexican counters with a cafe and bar · Sunset Valley · $$

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Dee Dee's fried chicken comes out under hot honey and Thai chili, off a first-ever full kitchen and a menu twice the size of the food truck's.

Solid · Coastal Mexican seafood · Blackland · $$$

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Celia Pellegrini took MICHELIN's Sommelier Award for Texas off this wine floor, and the kitchen grills whole butterflied fish under an annatto marinade.

Solid · Mexican · South 1st Street, South Austin · $$

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Nicolai McCrary calls these "among the best margaritas in Austin", and the large ones are limited to two a head.

Solid · Craft beer · Southeast Austin

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Eighteen beers on the wall and eight of them are lagers, among them a Czech-style dark lager, a smoked helles and the house pilsner.

Solid · Pizza, brewpub · Brentwood, Burnet Road

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Electric Jellyfish is the highest-selling craft beer by volume in Austin. The town has worn its name down to two letters.

Solid · BBQ · Lockhart · $$

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The family cooks the 1932 rub here on the brick pit Edgar Black Jr built, thirty miles before a van takes it up to the Austin counter.

Solid · Sichuan · North Austin · $$

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The Peking duck lands on a bamboo platter with hoisin, plum sauce, cucumbers, green onions, brown sugar and a bowl of duck broth to sip between bites.

Solid · Steakhouse · North Shoal Creek · $$$$

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The steaks go over live oak, and the ribeye sits a hundred hours in pineapple, sesame and ginger before it gets there.

Solid · Farmhouse ales · Fitzhugh Road, southwest Travis County

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Montmorency vs. Balaton is built on six pounds of cherries per gallon, and the Austin Chronicle's beer desk calls it "perhaps the most perfect beer in town".

Solid · Restaurant · East Cesar Chavez · $$$$

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The saffron cavatelli arrive with a gnocchi-like bite under a whole-grain mustard sauce, seeds included.

Solid · Brewery · Driftwood · $$

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Eric Puga's favorite beer in Austin is a black pilsner made 25 miles out of town: Dark Skies, bronze at the 2024 U.S. Open and gold in 2018.

Solid · Coffee and beer garden · Plaza Saltillo, East Austin · $

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Two house drinks came over from the Pickle Road original, the Cosmic Comet and the Liquid Sunshine, and there is an all-day taqueria in the yard.

Solid · Modern Mexican · Downtown · $$$$

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Build the kitchen on masa and the whole restaurant comes out gluten free, which is what happened here and nobody makes a speech about it.

Solid · Craft beer · Clarksville · $$

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"Ol' Gil is the best Pilsner in Austin," which is the Austin Chronicle's flat verdict in the year it ranked Hold Out second among the city's breweries.

Listed · BBQ · Southwest Austin · $$

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They sell the jalapeno cheddar sausage by the pound, so you can order a quarter of it alongside everything else.

Listed · Craft beer · Manor Road, Windsor Park · $$

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Saisons, pale ales and lagers brewed on Manor Road, with the brewery's own bar pizza to soak them up.

Listed · BBQ · The Drag, West Campus · $$

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The rub is the family's original 1932 formula, and the family smokes the meat in Lockhart and drives it thirty miles up to this counter every day.

Listed · Pizza · Northwest Austin · $$

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The tap wall is a rule before it is a number: over fifty lines and all of them Texan.

Listed · Texas wine · St. Elmo, South Austin · $$

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Spaghetti Western 2023: all Sangiovese, one Walker Vineyards block in the Texas High Plains, a cool wet spring then heat and wind, 205 cases, made downstairs.

Solid · Texas wine · Hye · $$

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Bill Blackmon has grown Texas grapes since the eighties. The red he and Chris Brundrett blend in Hye is named Enchanté, after Enchanted Rock up the road.

Listed · Mexican · South 1st Street, South Austin · $$

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The fajitas come out on a skillet still spitting, with house-made flour tortillas and a ticket to the salsa bar, where the Veracruzana carries bell peppers and olives.

Listed · Beer garden, food trucks · Far South Austin · $$

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The kitchen here is somebody else's truck, and the two parked in the yard are Granny's Tacos and Midway Dogs.

Listed · BBQ · Northwest Hills · $$

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The kitchen smokes baby back ribs, deep-fries them until the edges crisp, then sauces them like chicken wings.

Solid · Texas wine · Stonewall · $$

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The Aletheia rosé is mourvèdre and grenache off certified organic acreage in Seminole. Paula Forbes says it beats the same winery's rosé made from non-organic fruit.

Listed · Craft beer · Southeast Austin · $$

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Fritz German Pilsner, Sup Y'all IPA and Vadr Dark Czech Lager are the three beers The Austin Chronicle names in the piece that ranks this brewery 14th in the city.

Listed · American tavern · East Austin · $$$

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The burger comes with goop on request, which is French onion soup reduced down to a gravy and spooned over a thick seared patty.

Listed · Cocktails, patio · East Austin · $$

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A patio bar with an outdoor kitchen it hands over to other people.

Listed · Coffee · Austin · $$

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

Listed · American · Windsor Park · $$

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James Durham brought his JimJam's biscuit popup in-house, so the biscuits arrive with chili country gravy and the honey butter sliders come with turkey patties.

Listed · Beer · St. Elmo, South Austin · $$

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Patty Palace runs the kitchen inside the taproom, and Carl, the house kolsch, is the clean crisp thing to drink with the smashburger.

Listed · Bar · East Sixth · $

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East Side King started in this backyard, on a menu you ordered by number: Thai chicken karaage, Poor Qui's pork belly buns, deep-fried beets in Japanese spice, liberty rice, fried Brussels sprouts.

Listed · Tex-Mex and New Mexican · North Shoal Creek · $$

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Order the salsa sampler and you get all five at once, from the mild avocado to the El Scorpio, which is the fastest way to read a Tex-Mex kitchen.

Listed · Craft beer · Dripping Springs · $$

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Old-school Texas barbecue from a truck that parks here five days a week, at a brewery that opens three.

Listed · Craft beer · Northeast Austin · $$

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The board is clean-beer led: Vaughn German pilsner, Dad American lager, Carl kolsch, and a wall of IPAs the Austin Chronicle picks Canopy out of for coconut, peach and mango.

Listed · Craft beer · Lake Travis · $$

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"Oasis Brewing's kitchen is throwing haymakers with its pimento beer cheese bacon burger and harvest quinoa bowl," per the Austin Chronicle's 2023 brewery power rankings.

Listed · Breakfast tacos, whiskey bar · North Austin · $$

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Mornings, the drive-thru window does breakfast tacos and espresso. At night it's a neighborhood bar that pours until midnight; the kitchen stops at nine.

Temp closed · Restaurant · Downtown, Congress Avenue · $$$

Charred edamame arrives under pop rocks, and it has been on this menu since the room opened in 2012.

Listed · Coffee · South Austin · $

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The cocktail list was built around the garden on the property, cut herbs and vegetables into the drinks, and put tequila, mezcal and sotol behind them.

Listed · Texas wine · Driftwood · $$

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Two doctors decided Texas weather behaved like Italy's, so they planted a winery around Vermentino, Sangiovese and Dolcetto.

Listed · Sushi · Midtown Commons, North Central Austin · $$

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About $35 buys a 120 minute sitting, and the fish worth spending it on is the yellowtail.

Listed · Mediterranean and Asian small plates · Downtown · $$

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Shiitake mapo tofu under red Sichuan peppercorn, on a menu that also runs lamb kibbeh meatballs and whipped feta.

Listed · Craft beer · South Austin · $$

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The house program is deliberate range rather than a signature: hazy IPAs, American pilsners, fruited sours and West Coast IPAs off the same board, with Super Uber the festbier the Austin Chronicle picked out.

Listed · Texas wine · Hye · $$

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Seven generations of Yates have worked Texas land, and this one put a wood-fired pizza oven in the tasting room on US-290.

Listed · Bourbon · Hye · $$

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Every bottle is milled, cooked, distilled, barreled and aged on the Hye ranch, and volunteers hand-dip each one in wax in the bottling room you walk through.

Listed · Beer garden and food trucks · Cedar Park · $$

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A Cedar Park beer garden pouring beer, wine and zero-proof at a counter. The food comes off trucks the venue never names.

Listed · Texas wine · Fredericksburg · $$

book aheadthe room’s own account

Erik Hilmy picked this ground in 2008, farmland on heavy clay outside Fredericksburg, and planted it.