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The Infatuation
12 Restaurants To Make You Fall In Love With Austin Again
By Nicolai McCraryMatthew Jacobs,
1 day ago
It’s easy to fall out of love with Austin. The summers are brutal, I-35 feels like a giant parking lot, and the days when “Keep Austin Weird” was more of a mantra than a marketing slogan feel like a distant memory. The next time you find yourself romanticizing a quieter life out in the country where you can still get a cocktail for under $10, head to one of the spots on this list. These are the restaurants that remind us what we enjoy about Austin, and they couldn’t exist anywhere else.
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No rating: This is a restaurant we want to re-visit before rating, or it’s a coffee shop, bar, or dessert shop. We only rate spots where you can eat a full meal.
Texas Chili Parlor is a portal to Old Austin—there are usually a handful of people sitting at the bar who look like they haven’t moved since the restaurant first opened in 1976. This place is hardly a secret, and yet it still feels like privileged information. Here, Austinites looking to avoid the trendy spots Downtown and on the East Side gather for great chili and Tex-Mex in what looks like an appealingly grungy roadhouse. Order the Freidas Enchiladas—a giant platter of cheese enchiladas topped with a scoop of Texas-style chili (no beans)—and consider adding one of the stiff Mad Dog margaritas if you don’t have anywhere to be later.
Fonda San Miguel harkens back to an era when a gallon of gas costs 50 cents (1975, if you don’t feel like Googling), but it takes more than time alone to become a household name. They’ve put out consistently good fine-dining takes on classics from Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, and Yucatan, all in a beautiful building that looks more like an epic scene from Pixar’s Coco than a restaurant that's just a stone’s throw away from a CVS in Allandale. Plates here are large, rich, and decadent—order the tenderloin carne asada and shredded duck enchiladas with poblano-spinach sauce, then grab a couple of refreshing watermelon margaritas to wash them down.
The bar at Quality Seafood is a place you’d expect to find in an old fishing town, where regulars occupy half the stools and the bartender has been serving cheap beer since before the drinking age changed to 21. Considering it’s been around in some form since the 1930s, we wouldn’t be surprised if most of that is true. Quality Seafood is half market and half restaurant—if you’re here for lunch or dinner, grab a couple of filets from the fishmonger on your way out. The seafood is as fresh as any you’ll find in Austin, short of whatever might be swimming in Town Lake.
You might know Top Notch as the backdrop to Matthew McConaughey’s quotable “alright, alright, alright” in Dazed and Confused, or you might just know it as the charcoal-broiled burger joint that’s been on Burnet Road since the early ‘70s. Either way, Top Notch remains as essential to the Austin ecosystem as Town Lake and swarms of grackles. Get a double cheeseburger or a two-piece fried chicken dinner, add a side of onion rings, and take comfort in a dining room full of the movie’s memorabilia. Better yet, order curbside from your car and relive the scenes yourself.
ALC feels like a classic steakhouse you’d expect to find in small-town Texas, complete with guitars hanging from the walls and carved wooden cowboys and horses scattered about the dining room. Just head to a quiet strip mall near 12th and Lamar—boots and hat optional. It’s old-school and relaxed, with a pretty standard menu of steaks and chops that arrive with picture-perfect grill marks that look like they were drawn on with a ruler and a Sharpie. The best part is you don’t need to make a reservation days or weeks in advance like many of the other steakhouses in Austin.
On weekends, the crowds waiting at this vegan/vegetarian destination spill onto the corner of South 1st St. and West Mary St. Whether it’s your first time there or your hundredth, Bouldin Creek Cafe is its own mini-scene where the ambiance and the food are equally fun. Many of Bouldin's dishes, like the Wanna-BLTA and homemade veggie chorizo breakfast tacos, taste almost as meaty—and just as good—as their original counterparts. It’s a great excuse to sip micheladas or mimosas after a morning at Barton Springs, and seeing the out-of-towners you bring with you praise the restaurant’s funky mosaics, buzzing patio, and multicolored interior might soften your gripes about I-35 traffic.
Mattie’s is located in busy South Austin, but it might as well be its own village. The sprawling grounds are home to peacocks, oak trees, and a romantic Victorian manor with diners spread throughout various rooms. But scenery isn’t the only draw. The menu’s emphasis on Southern classics—biscuits, gumbo, fried green tomatoes, and fried chicken served with mashed potatoes, to name a few top choices—matches the farmhouse backdrop. It’s the kind of place where reservations for Easter brunch (or any brunch, really) and Thanksgiving get competitive. Eating at Mattie’s, whether for a special occasion or a casual get-together, is like spending two blissful hours in the countryside—and yet it’s right there off of South 1st St.
The exterior of Enchiladas Y Mas doesn’t look like much, but the long line of people waiting outside is the first indicator that through those doors is a lively, always-bustling restaurant with enchiladas, fajitas, and strong margaritas. The inside is about as bare as the outside—other spots like Matt’s El Rancho do a better job of playing into the kitschy side of things—but when you just want stellar Tex-Mex-style enchiladas, you head straight to West Anderson Lane. It’s been around for more than three decades and shows no signs of slowing down soon.
Joe’s Bakery has been open for 60 years, and there’s still a wait almost every weekend morning. Everyone’s here for the same thing—tender carne guisada, huevos rancheros, barbacoa, and the world’s crispiest bacon (call our bluff, we dare you) served on fluffy flour tortillas. It's an old-school joint with a lively, bare-bones dining room set to a soundtrack of Tejano jukebox jams. Think of it as a perfect cross-section of Austin through the years, attracting regulars and transplants alike. Show up during the week and you can probably walk right in.
You knew this list wouldn’t be complete without a barbecue recommendation. In a city where getting BBQ often means long waits and/or hit-and-miss menus, Micklethwait strikes the right balance between quality and feasibility. The meats and seasonings lean classic, but the sides are where things get fun. Coleslaw gets an upgrade in the form of lemon poppy slaw, and the citrus beet salad tastes like something you’d find at a restaurant with real chairs and tablecloths. (This one is an East Side trailer with picnic tables.) Grab a couple pounds of brisket, a few slices of turkey, and Tex-Czech sausages, then load up on sides. You can enjoy your meal before your friends standing in the Franklin Barbecue line down the street have even made it to the front door.
One of many exciting things about Eldorado Cafe is the fact that you can order a salsa sampler with six varieties—each increasing in spice—and rig together your own little Hot Ones challenge, all with a margarita in hand. You can also get classic Mexican and Tex-Mex staples at this Central Austin strip-mall restaurant that will inevitably be packed full of locals here for burritos, enchiladas, crispy tacos, and every other combination of tortillas, meat, and cheese imaginable. We suggest the Dart Bowl enchiladas, a nod to the fallen bowling alley that delighted Austin for over six decades. Eldorado might not be the oldest Tex-Mex spot in town, but it’s doing a good job of keeping the vintage Austin spirit alive.
Ask any random person in Austin where to go for a special occasion, and there’s a 96% chance they’ll say Uchi. The restaurant earned its reputation by offering a mix of traditional sushi and inventive Japanese fusion dishes at a time when most places thought “Japanese fusion” meant plopping spicy mayo on a tuna roll and calling it a day. Instead, Uchi is full of originality, like their signature hama chili, which is sliced yellowtail swimming in a savory ponzu broth. There’s a reason this place has expanded to half a dozen states—but it all started right here in a tiny, renovated house on South Lamar. There’s no better way to see what makes it so special than by visiting the source.
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