Red Ash.

Red Ash

John Carver cooks over a wood grill on Colorado Street, and the wait to sit down has run months since he opened in 2016. The porterhouse is dry-aged fifty days and finished with roasted shallot butter. Everything else that matters here comes off the same fire.

Why go

Red Ash belongs to Larry Foles, Guy Villavaso and John Carver, and Odam describes what they built as a steakhouse-Italian hybrid that hits people right in their salt-and-fat-loving pleasure centers.1 The three of them founded Eddie V's and sold it to a chain operator in 2011, which is the pedigree behind the room and also the reason Odam calls the formula ripe for replication.1 Carver now runs three downtown rooms: this one, J. Carver's, and a third that made the Statesman's best-new list in 2025.2 The dining room is two stories of concrete, graffiti and Edison bulbs, and Nicolai McCrary found it loud and at capacity every minute he was in it.3 Odam judges the cooking to go big by design. Center-cut filets come in shallot butter, tagliolini under crabmeat. Two plates run against that grain, the spaghetti alla chitarra and the snapper crudo with Calabrian chilies, and he credits them with a slightly more deft touch.1

Order this / avoid

• Order: the braised-beef agnolotti. McCrary's line on the pasta is the honest version of the pitch: sometimes you just want to dig into a bowl of rich, savory braised-beef agnolotti with fresh truffles and roasted veal jus without thinking too much about it.3
• Order the pastas as sides, several of them, which is McCrary's own move for getting through more of the menu.3
• Then a large steak for the table. The aging runs 30 to 50 days: The 30-50 days it spends aging adds some funk, but it's balanced out by a few spoonfuls of roasted shallot butter over the top.3
• To start, roasted vine tomatoes and burrata, then the wood-roasted bone marrow and wild mushroom risotto.3
• Avoid: stacking rich on rich. McCrary's caveat is worth taking literally: expect lots of butter, garlic, bone marrow, and cheese in just about everything.3

What locals & experts say

• The Infatuation scored it 8.8 in May 2025, and the headline is the argument: Red Ash's textbook-perfect steaks and pasta justify its long reservation list.3
• Matthew Odam has it on the Statesman's 2025 guide under Italian, and traces the formula back to the Eddie V's founders.1
• When Odam wrote up the city's best new restaurants of 2025, he introduced Carver through this kitchen: John Carver has done so well with the pasta and steaks at Red Ash and the beef and seafood at J. Carver's.2
• Austin Chronicle readers made it a Fine Dining finalist in the 2026 Best of Austin Readers Poll, alongside Barley Swine, Fabrik and Jeffrey's. That is a public vote.4

Good to know

• Booking is the hard part. McCrary reported in May 2025 that reservations open six months ahead. Prime tables go about four months out, late-night seats about two. A same-day call sometimes catches a cancellation.3
• Eight or more is a phone call, not an online booking.5
• If you only want the steak, McCrary says J. Carver's serves a very similar one on shorter notice.3

Verdict

should-visit — The product here is better than the cooking is restrained, and if you like that trade this is the best version of it in Austin. Order something acidic for the middle of the table and you will get through more of the menu. The booking window is the real cost of eating here, so decide months ahead whether the evening is worth it.