Vigilante Gastropub & Games
The menu is built to be eaten with one hand so you do not grease the game pieces: every burger is a slider, every salad is rolled in rice paper, and the rest is skewers.1
Why go
That constraint is the whole design, and it runs through the room as well as the plate: custom-built tables sized for two to four players, a touchscreen game menu, and staff who will teach you the rules.1 The cheese plate comes from Antonelli's in Hyde Park, which tells you the kitchen was aiming at the same standard as the rest of the city even when it missed.1 The team is led by Preston Swincher and the food came from self-trained chef Derrick Hoang.1 All of that is from a review published in March 2017; the bar has since renamed from Vigilante Gaming Bar, and nobody with a byline has published on it since.
Order this / avoid
- The Greek mushroom salad roll, filled with briny feta. It is the one wrapped item the critic thought worked.1
- Avoid the pho slider. It arrived dry, and the herbs and jalapenos were missing off the order.1
- Avoid the chicken and waffle sliders, which lost the waffle in most bites.1
- All of that is a 2017 menu. No published source describes what the kitchen sends out now, so no dish here is called a signature.
What locals & experts say
- The Austin Chronicle reviewed it in prose, not to a score, bylined Brandon Watson, 31 March 2017, with prices dish by dish: elote taquitos $7, samosa croquettes $5, caprese salad roll $7, Thai chicken satay $7, sliders $7.50.1
- Brandon Watson, on the kitchen, verbatim:
the menu continues in a series of near misses.
On the samosa croquettes:lacking a binder, the fried parcels fell apart and were difficult to dip in the mango chutney.
On the elote taquitos:the dish doesn't really work without the brightness of lime.
1 - The same critic recommended it anyway, verbatim:
I would have still recommended Vigilante if they were serving Sysco tater tots. The total experience matters much more than the food, and that they have right.
Both halves of that are the review, and both belong here.1
Good to know
- Hygiene: one inspection on record and it is old. Austin Public Health has the kitchen at listed under the former name Vigilante Gaming Bar, 7010 Easy Wind Dr Unit 150, with a single score of 88 on 2 July 2024. That is more than two years back, past the eighteen-month currency bound this project uses, so it is incomplete data rather than a current reading. Austin's failing threshold is below 70, so the 88 itself is not a finding. The register's newest published inspection anywhere is 22 May 2026 and the file was last updated 15 June 2026.3
- Two other kitchens share the building. Bamboo House Austin is at Unit 100 and Midtown Grocery & Cafe at Unit A, each on its own facility_id. Their scores belong to them.3
- The register still has the old name. Searching the current trading name will find nothing; VIGILANTE finds it.3
Verdict
could-visit — A board-game bar in Highland where the food is engineered for one hand: burgers as sliders, salads rolled in rice paper, everything on a skewer, so the pieces stay clean. The Chronicle called the whole thing a delight and the cooking a series of near misses, in the same review, and meant both. That review is from 2017 and the place has renamed since, so treat the dish notes as history.