ATXGuide
The Hit List: New Austin Restaurants To Try Right Now
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
When new restaurants open, we check them out. This means that we subject our stomachs and social lives to the good, the bad, and more often than not, the perfectly fine. And every once in a while, a new restaurant makes us feel like a grackle in an HEB parking lot. When that happens, we add it here, to The Hit List.
The Hit List is where you’ll find all of the best new restaurants in Austin. As long as it opened within the past several months and we’re still talking about it, it’s on this guide. The latest addition might be a buzzy omakase counter, an under-the-radar taco truck, or a gas station with food that we can’t stop talking about. Or maybe it’s even a restaurant with caviar priced by the bump. You do you.
Keep tabs on the Hit List and you will always know just which new restaurants you should be eating at right now. And if you’re looking for a hot new bar, or a fun and exciting dinner spot, we’ve got those, too.
New to the Hit List (4/16): Donkey Mo's, Redbud Ice House
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
The Korean fried chicken at Donkey Mo's tests the upper limits of the crunch spectrum. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because they had a long-standing residency at H-Mart before shuttering in 2021. Two chickenless years later, they’re back in a bigger space with a larger menu that also includes things like spicy fried rice cakes and churros. The toughest decision you’ll have to make is choosing between wings, tenders, and thigh nuggets—whichever you end up with, get them tossed in sweet and spicy sauce if you like a little kick. And if you’re here to film some crispy fried chicken ASMR, don’t forget to hit record before you jump straight in.
photo credit: MaieB Hospitality
If you’re someone whose idea of being outdoorsy is sitting on a patio with a very cold beer and a burger in hand, Redbud Ice House is where you go. The excellent burgers come topped with pimento cheese and bacon (if you want), and the beers arrive in a frosty schooner that’s roughly the size of your head. The restaurant is 80% outdoor seating, and even the dining room has garage door walls we’re pretty sure are permanently open. Redbud feels more like an homage than a recreation of a traditional Texas Icehouse, but when that nod comes with air conditioning and a full bar, we’re okay with a few liberties being taken.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
While most of the pitmasters in Texas argue over who makes the jiggliest brisket, LeRoy And Lewis is looking at the rest of the cow. And they’re cooking all of it—from beef cheeks and flat iron steaks, to slow-smoked chuck roasts and beef chorizo sausages. And that’s before we even get to the pulled lamb, smoked chicken, kofta, and pork smashburgers that make up the other half of the menu. If the LeRoy And Lewis name sounds familiar, that’s because they’ve been operating a food truck for years that’s consistently been one of our favorite barbecue spots in the city. Now they’ve just expanded to a brick-and-mortar that comes with a massive indoor dining room, a much bigger menu, and a full bar where you can get very Texas-friendly drinks, like a frozen Big Red sangria or a cocktail with Dr. Pepper and Pasubio vino amaro.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
Tare follows the same format as a lot of other $100+ omakase sushi spots in town—a speakeasy-style dining room and 15-ish courses of nigiri and small plates. But instead of feeling like an expensive carbon copy, Tare feels like it spent its formative years in the Rio Grande Valley and decided to mix in everything around it. Nigiri ranges from minimalist bites touched with nothing but soy and wasabi over well-seasoned rice, to a few more experimental ones like shima aji drizzled with salsa macha, or sweet shrimp served raw over a bite-sized tamale. It’s a little bit Japanese, and a little bit South Texan, and it somehow all takes place at a 12-seat sushi counter hidden behind a curtain in a nondescript office building in North Austin.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
Fans of Nashville-style hot chicken probably already knew of Dang Hot 89’s arrival long before we had a chance to visit—the smell of sizzling cayenne pepper cuts straight through the air like a bat signal. Taco Bell mild-saucers beware, this is one of the few Austin spots where the “dang hot” spicy level should be taken seriously. This is a food trailer in the middle of a big dirt lot in Northwest Austin, but you’re not here for ambiance. You’re just here for ridiculously hot chicken, and you can get it in tender, bone-in, or sandwich form. Whatever you choose, just know that this will likely be some of the juiciest chicken you’ll get your hands on—with crispy skin and a Hot Cheeto-red tint to the whole thing. And once you do get your hands on it, remember to be careful around your eyes.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
Sijie is a mini-chain with a few locations in Northern California, and we hope it’s just a matter of time until Sijie’s soup dumplings pepper Central Texas in much the same way. It’s located in a strip mall in Northwest Austin with a large dining room blasting soft rock ballads while tiny robots on wheels deliver plates of food to tables that already have too many dishes on them. It’s hard to narrow down your order from a menu with nearly 200 items on it, but start with some pan-fried soup buns and grilled lamb kebabs, then finish off with thick and chewy housemade noodles with sweet garlic pork. Show up with a group and make an even bigger dent in the menu. In a city full of great Chinese food, Sijie brings a few dishes to the table that you won’t find anywhere else in Austin.
photo credit: Taylor Hannan
Austin has no shortage of omakases—some that we like, and others that we don’t—and this sleek Rosedale omakase spot is a welcome addition to the crew. The meal consists of 20ish courses, in which you’ll experience bright crudos, cooked plates, and dry-aged fish over rice. The nigiri is good—with high-quality fish and rice that we wish was a tad warmer—but the stars of the show are the small, non-sushi plates. That’s where unique textures and flavors get a chance to play with each other, like in a vibrant shrimp aguachile or stewed winter vegetables in a rich, savory broth. At $175, this is one of the pricier omakases in town, but you can also rest assured knowing there are no tacky upsells on the end to ensure you get full.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
The dough at Feral Pizza ferments for nearly two days, and we can only imagine it spends that time pondering the true meaning of life, love, and what it means to be a crust. The end result is crispy, chewy, and perfectly suited to pair with whatever toppings you choose, including our favorite—the ultra-simple Tomato Pie with just sauce, garlic oil, and pecorino. It’s a New York-style pizza, with an ultra-thin layer of sauce that provides some sweet, tangy flavor without overpowering the crust. This whole operation is done in a tiny trailer behind a convenience store in North Loop—as a result, pies can take a while. Call ahead or make yourself cozy with a few drinks from the shop next door. If dough can hang out that long, you can wait 30 minutes without going feral.
photo credit: Richard Casteel
Murray’s in East Austin is the type of place you should go when you don’t want to make a big deal about dinner, but you actually kind of do. It’s from the people behind Nickel City and Juniper, so there’s a strong focus on both food and drink. Burgers and goulash share a playing field with prime rib and beef tartare—you decide how fancy you want to be—and expertly crafted cocktails are available in full-size or tiny versions (there’s even a mini cocktail flight option). It’s dark and dimly lit, with wooden walls and a carpeted back room that feels like a place where mob bosses discuss “family” things, and you’ll probably find yourself chatting about what to order next time before you even make your way out the front door.
photo credit: Nicolai Mccrary
If there was one thing you probably heard about the now-closed trailer, Fil N' Viet, it probably had something to do with the wings. Shatteringly crispy and tender, the wings were some of our favorites in town. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the team’s new wing-only concept came in and hit the ground running with just as much love and focus as Wes Anderson has for pastels. Flavors traverse a course through Southeast Asia, pulling inspiration from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and India, each equally pulling their weight. And if you show up on Fridays, you can get all six flavors in a “wing flight.” Find East Meets Wing in Playground ATX—a restaurant incubator on Airport Boulevard, near I-35—where it’ll be until mid-2024.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
Not to rest on their laurels, the people behind the excellent Neapolitan pizzeria Bufalina and Bufalina Due have opened a brand new spot, Palm Pizza on Cesar Chavez in East Austin. Cooked in a gas-fired steel deck oven, the 18-inch pizzas are classic New York-style pies, with a thin, crispy crust, and they’re spectacular. The pizzas taste of New York City (but maybe with less grit and pigeon). The pizzas are only available by pre-order, but there's also a little patio you can grab a picnic table at if you want to eat your dinner close to the source.
Yeah, “vegan” can sometimes be triggering terminology (with thoughts of Franken-pseudo meats) but the tasting menu restaurant Fabrik turns “plant-based” on its head. Here, the limits become a sandbox to explore depths of flavors from techniques like kojis and ferments and scratch-made elements like pasta and bread. It skews fine dining, only offering five or seven courses at relatively reasonable prices ($70 and $85 respectively), with an optional $60 wine pairing that's very much worth it. The whole scrappy operation functions out of a tiny, janky space with eight or so tables at the base of a new apartment building, and it all feels like you’re in on a big secret, like seeing a band before they got big. It’s the most promising new restaurant we’ve come across in a while.
From the teams behind Uchi and Uchiko comes the red-hot izakaya-inspired restaurant Uchiba. It’s not a new concept—the original location of Uchiba is in Dallas—so it hit the ground running in a bespoke mid-century-inspired space downtown. The menu has the crowd-pleasing Uchi and Uchiko hits (hot rock, hama chili, and all the sushi you can imagine), but then there’s a bunch of new dishes including grilled yakitori, and a whole mess of exquisitely prepared dumplings, bao, and buns. While the Uchi restaurants in Austin famously only have wine- and sake-based cocktails, Uchiba has a creative liquor-based cocktail program, alongside the fun “perfect pairs,” in which a tiny app gets paired with a tiny cocktail.
photo credit: Richard Casteel
What happens when one of Austin’s best taco trucks decides to get into the burger game? You end up with a smashburger topped with a longaniza patty and a costra cheese corn tortilla. Because just when we thought we had reached the thin peak of the smashburger movement, this place makes us feel like we’re still in the parking lot. Technically, we are. Cuantas Hamburguesas is parked at the Arbor Food Park in East Austin, right next to its famous sibling, Cuantos Tacos. Much like at its taco counterpart, the menu here is small, delicious, and affordable. You can also grab a more classic double-patty Americana—or try a burger topped with ham and sliced hot dogs. Add a side of fries cooked in beef tallow, then marvel at the fact that every combo is less than $10.
photo credit: Nicolai McCrary
Sometimes you want a thick, juicy burger with a little ribbon of pink through the middle. Other times you just want a patty that’s smashed so thin it might get mistaken for an ancient piece of papyrus. Patty Palace is for when you want the latter. It’s a lot like the popular Bad Larry Burger pop-up, but without the need to set an alarm and wait in a long line to get it. That means super-smashed patties with crispy lattice edges, grilled onions, a few slices of pickles, and some mustard or special sauce. And, instead of waiting for an Instagram alert, you can get it almost any night of the week and pair it with whatever beer you want from St. Elmo Brewing, where Patty Palace is parked.
