eating alone

Destination · Texan · South Lamar · $$$

book ahead

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 · Mexico City tacos · East Austin · $

walk-in

Suadero comes off a choricera, the domed lard pan of Mexico City street stalls, and the cut here is brisket standing in for the thin one between sirloin and lower flank.

Destination · Seasonal American with French and Italian leanings · Rosewood · $$$

walk-in

This room gives its staff four weeks of paid vacation, paid family leave, subsidized therapy and health insurance, and Food & Wine made it Restaurant of the Year in 2023 for exactly that.

Destination · Sushi · Mueller · $$$$

booking essential

Michael Che flies to Tokyo every week, buys his own fish at Toyosu, butchers it at his teacher's restaurant and is back behind eight seats in Mueller for service that day.

Solid · Restaurant · Austin · $

walk-in

Alton Brown called the migas here the best breakfast taco he had ever had, back when the kitchen was a converted school bus parked at 1704 East Cesar Chavez.

Solid · Cocktails and listening · South Congress · $$$

book ahead

Obscured by Clouds takes its name from the 1972 Pink Floyd album and pours Suntory Toki whiskey with lavender honey, lemon, blue spirulina and egg white under a dust of lavender.

Solid · Chili · Downtown · $

walk-in

The Mad Dog Margarita is two parts Monte Alban mezcal to one Triple Sec and one fresh lime, and it exists because the writers drinking here in the seventies could not afford anything better.

Solid · Sushi · Round Rock · $$

walk-in

The rice is seasoned properly and the fish is cut generously, in a strip mall between a dental office and an axe-throwing park.

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

book ahead

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

Solid · Restaurant · North Central Austin · $$$

book ahead

Gruyere and black pepper popovers have outlasted two owners here, and one of the reasons is a clause in the sale.

Listed · Mexican · Austin · $

walk-in

Most Austin breakfast-taco counters keep two salsas going. Pueblo Viejo keeps five, out to a habanero and ghost chili.

Listed · Sushi · Cedar Creek · $$$$

booking essential

Sixteen courses and a dessert at an omakase counter inside a Bastrop County resort, thirty miles southeast of downtown.