Launderette
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.1
Why go
Margaret Vera had lived in the neighborhood since 1999 and had wanted this building for years. Rene Ortiz and Laura Sawicki came off Sway and La Condesa wanting something that was not theme-y. The three of them opened in a converted laundromat in February 2015.21 Ortiz's own answer, a year in, on what makes a room what it is: What defines a space? People. It's what they think.
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He is still the chef-owner.6 This kitchen cooks across continents and does not lose the plot. The card runs flat iron steak rubbed with sauteed aromatic herbs under eggplant raita, cauliflower shawarma, and pork belly with green curry aioli and peanut-sake dressing. It also runs hoisin-sticky pork ribs and redfish in Old Bay beurre blanc.4 There is a wood-fired grill, an approachable wine list and a covered patio.4
Order this / avoid
- Order: the beef tartare with tonnato, chestnut mushrooms and ash-infused rye bread. Then the grilled octopus over roasted yellow tomato sauce with Calabrian chili mayonnaise and bottarga.5 The burrata is a permanent fixture and Matthew Odam says it never feels played.4
- Dessert, plural: the birthday cake ice cream sandwich, and the tonka bean mille-feuille with lemon curd, blueberry jam and creme fraiche ice cream if you want the technical one.15
- Avoid: coming for Laura Sawicki's pastry section. She created the sandwich and made the James Beard Outstanding Pastry Chef semifinals off this kitchen in 2016. The pastry team has changed since. The sandwich stayed and she did not.1
What locals & experts say
- Matthew Odam put it in his 40 best Austin restaurants for 2025, on the range:
The menu has some trusty staples that have rightfully earned permanent status, the burrata is always good and never feels played, and offers eclecticism without gimmickry, providing many avenues for exploration.
He notes that a decade is two lifetimes in this business.4 - Laura Sawicki, on the dessert getting away from her, speaking to Eater in 2016:
I had no idea it was going to happen. It's literally an institution in its own one-and-a-half-by-two-inch square.
Darcie Duttweiler reports in the Austin Chronicle that several staff have it tattooed on them.1 - The first year did the heavy lifting. Launderette was a James Beard Best New Restaurant semifinalist and Sawicki an Outstanding Pastry Chef semifinalist, both in the 2016 cycle.3 That same year Food & Wine put it among its ten restaurants of the year, on the line that
Ortiz creates next-level versions of the standards,
a year after Austin Monthly had named it one of its best new restaurants.7
Good to know
- When it trades: lunch Monday through Friday, dinner every night, brunch at weekends, with seats at the bar, in the dining room and on the patio.6
- Hygiene: four routine inspections, 85 in July 2025, 87 in February 2025, 94 in October 2023 and 96 in June 2023. All of them sit above the city's failing line of 70.8
- Prices: the guide bands the room $$$ and I haven't found a list published anywhere.5
Verdict
should-visit — Book it, and take the happy hour if you want this kitchen at its cheapest: cocktails and mezcal negronis at the bar, which is the route the MICHELIN inspector picks out too. Order savory, then order the dessert anyway. The guide carries the room and gives it no distinction.