Hot Headlines

Celebrity restaurant and bar spins into Austin, plus more popular stories

Editor's note: Pingpong and SXSW parties lead this round of top stories. Read on for more of the week's most popular headlines.

1. A-list actress spins new bar and restaurant in iconic Austin space. Austin will get its first pingpong bar, thanks to Susan Sarandon. SPiN, the New York-based chain of restaurant/bars where pingpong is the centerpiece, will open downtown at 213 W. Fifth St. — the former home to Antone's — this fall.

2. All of these University of Texas programs rank No. 1 in the nation. Austin is in good standing with U.S. News & World Report right now. Not only is the Capital City the No. 1 place to live, but the University of Texas at Austin ranks as one of the best colleges — and so do its graduate programs.

3. Here are the best free parties of SXSW, plus RSVP secrets you need to know. SXSW is wrapping up, you have neither a wristband nor a badge, but you're still set on participating. What do you do? That's easy: Hit up the following parties that are free and loaded with great acts.

4. Austin's eight best neighborhood restaurants make us feel right at home. There's nothing quite like a neighborhood restaurant — a quaint spot you can visit frequently, one that feels like home. Our CultureMap Tastemaker nominees for Neighborhood Restaurant of the Year include establishments across the city that reflect the rich variety of cuisine that Austin has to offer.

5. Austin lands new daily nonstop flight to hot California destination. A new nonstop flight is taking off from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Alaska Airlines will launch daily nonstop service from Austin to San Jose, California, this summer. Just days later, the airline also added a new flight to San Diego.

SPiN is coming to Austin this fall.

SPiN San Francisco/Facebook

SPiN is coming to Austin this fall.

More Foraging

Free 'food forest' in East Austin expands with thousands of new plants

Angelina Alanis at Festival Beach Food Forest

Photo courtesy of KVUE

Angelina Alanis gives a tour of the garden, which is open to anyone.

In East Austin, there is an edible forest garden called Festival Beach Food Forest where anyone can walk around and harvest free produce, nuts, medicinal plant leaves and herbs. And over the summer, it grew to several times its size.

The forest has fig trees, peach trees, grapevines, asparagus and more that's not in season right now. You can grab passionfruit and plants like yaupon holly, with leaves that can make a caffeinated tea, rosemary and lemon balm.

"[Lemon balm] is part of the mint family," said Angelina Alanis, communication and partnership coordinator for Festival Beach Food Forest. "It has a lemony taste but it's good for a nervous stomach. I'm prone to anxiety so I always grab a hunk."

The food forest is located right next to Interstate 35 and Lady Bird Lake on 29 Waller St., near a part of town that's known for being a food desert, lacking grocery stores.

"There's as much as a 20-year life expectancy difference between parts of East and West Austin, and a lot of that comes down to food access, health care access and also access to nature."

Alanis said for the past nine years, the volunteer-based grassroots project been helping with the issue and just recently expanded in the summer from two-thirds of an acre of city parkland to over 3.5 acres.

"We're going to have hundreds of new trees," said Alanis. "We've already planted 150 new trees in the area and then thousands of plants on the ground."

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They also plan to add a community kitchen and a pavilion to do things like cooking classes or informational sessions.

Read the full story at KVUE.com.

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