txmo best new restaurants

Acclaimed downtown Austin eatery crowned Texas Monthly's Best New Restaurant for 2020

Texas Monthly food editor Pat Sharpe has delivered her annual assessment of the state's best new restaurants. Published Monday, February 17, on the magazine's website, the article, titled "The Best New Restaurants in Texas for 2020," provides a ranked list of Texas' 10 best new restaurants as well as honorable mentions.

To be eligible for the list, establishments must have opened between December 1, 2018 and December 1, 2019, and it must be a restaurant's first Texas location. Sharpe notes that this year's list has an international feel with eateries that take their inspiration from places such as Italy, Japan, Goa, and Spain. She finds another tie that binds most of her choices.

"I've noticed a trend that has been growing since the craft cocktail movement began a couple of decades ago; restaurants are becoming more like bars," Sharpe writes. "That is, more casual and (sigh) noisier than ever."

Austin's Comedor takes the top spot, the first time a local restaurant has taken the top spot since 2011. It also marks the second year in a row that one of the city's Mexican restaurants made a strong impression on the critic (Suerte took second last year).

Sharpe raves about the modern Mexican restaurant, comparing it to Houston chef and James Beard Award-winner Hugo Ortega's three Mexican restaurants as well as Pujol, the Mexico City restaurant ranked 12th in the world.

"Be advised that the Texas Mexican Food Timeline does have a significant new date: 2019," she writes. "In other words, there's Before Comedor (BC) and After Comedor (AC). It's just that simple."

No surprise to see Vixen's Wedding on the list in eighth place; Sharpe's had her eyes on it since she authored a rare preview of the Goan restaurant from chefs Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher. Honorable mentions go to Nixta Taqueria and DipDipDip Tatsu-ya.

Houston and Dallas lead the way with three entries each, but give a slight edge to the Bayou City — all of its entries rank in the top five: Squable (No. 2), Davis St. at Hermann Park (No. 3), and MAD (No. 5). One Fifth Gulf Coast and Rosie Cannonball earn honorable mentions.

Sharpe praises Squable owners Justin Yu and Bobby Heugel for "wisely staying out of the way" of the creative dishes being served by chefs Mark Clayton and Drew Gimma. Davis St. earns a spot thanks to chef Mark Holley's seafood-oriented menu. The critic seems utterly delighted by MAD's whimsical cuisine and decor, writing that chef Luis Roger is "having the time of his life" with the modern tapas that are the restaurant's standout dishes.

Homewood (No. 4), Salaryman (No. 6), and Khao Noodle Shop (No. 8) represent Dallas, with Ka-Tip Thai Street Food and Beverley's making the honorable mentions. Fort Worth's sole spot on the list belongs to Gemelle, the Italian restaurant from celebrity chef Tim Love.

Savor, the restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America, provides San Antonio with its lone entry in the top 10, but both Evo and Kindling Texas Kitchen (in the suburb of Cibolo) earn honorable mentions for the Alamo City.

The Comedor pork chop.

Photo by Hayden Spears

The Comedor pork chop.

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Whoops

Michelin goofs on a few restaurants honored in first Texas guide

Kau Ba/Facebook

Houston's Kau Ba has been removed from the Michelin Guide.

Texans' reactions to the first Michelin Guide in the state have ranged from glowing to unimpressed, but a few notable mix-ups are more concrete than differences in taste. The November 11 ceremony honored more than 100 restaurants across the state, but at least two were in error. In Dallas the guide confused two restaurants with each other, and in Houston one of them had closed.

Starting in Dallas: The Guide's release announcing the list of restaurants who'd won awards included The Charles, an award-winning Italian restaurant in Dallas' Design District, as one of 57 restaurants that earned a "Recommended" rating.

The Charles is a surely deserving restaurant that opened in 2018, the first concept from acclaimed food & beverage group Duro Hospitality, which has since gone on to open other restaurants such as El Carlos Elegante, Sister, and Cafe Duro.

But the Guide got the wrong Charles: The real recipient was Mister Charles, a sibling Duro Hospitality restaurant that opened at 3219 Knox St. in early 2024.

The Charles specializes in Italian and Texas-inspired dishes.

Mister Charles features French and Italian-influenced dishes.

It wasn't just an incorrect name; it listed the accompanying (incorrect) address.

A spokesperson for Michelin Guide verified that Mister Charles was the winner and said that the listing of The Charles was a mistake.

“This was an internal error caused by our geolocation process. The problem will be corrected in the most expeditious manner,” the spokesperson said. The Guide website has since updated the list and replaced The Charles with Mister Charles.

Having a difference of opinion about a critic's choices is one thing — but having an error of this magnitude is something else entirely.

And blaming "geolocation" as the source of the error is a curious excuse. Geolocation refers to the ability to track the whereabouts of an electronic device using GPS, cell phone towers, WiFi access points or a combination of these.

The Houston mix-up was also disappointing, but only involved one restaurant: In a press release issued Thursday, November 14, the Guide announced that it had removed Montrose Vietnamese restaurant Kau Ba from the list of Bib Gourmand recipients.

The reason: "Upon further investigation, our team has discovered the restaurant has been permanently closed since our Inspection team's visits occurred," the statement reads.

As has been widely noted in local media, Kau Ba closed earlier this month. The restaurant’s Instagram account now belongs to Alora, which is described as “a fresh Peruvian-Vietnamese fusion concept inspired by travels to Saigon.” It is expected to open soon.

Open since 2018, Kau Ba served an innovative take on Vietnamese fare created by Nikki Tran. The restaurant built on the notoriety Tran had achieved after being featured in two Netflix series: Somebody Feed Phil and Ugly Delicious. It earned considerable acclaim, including a spot in the Houston Chronicle’s top 100 restaurants as recently as 2023 and a nomination for Best Neighborhood Restaurant in the 2021 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards.

The restaurant went through a number of iterations during its tenure. For three-and-a-half years, Tran partnered with Aya Sushi owners Minette Corpuz and Bruce Kish to oversee operations, but they parted ways in February 2023.

In an email sent to Houston Public Media, Tran expressed regret over Michelin's decision.

“But we understand and respect Michelin’s decision to remove Kau Ba from its selection,” Tran said to HPM. “Exercising an abundance of caution from a legal position, I am not able currently to share further details of our situation but I do hope to follow up soon with more information.”

“Until then, on behalf of the entire Kau Ba team, we want to thank the entire culinary community for the recognition and support,” Tran added. “Kau Ba is proud of the dishes we created and look forward to sharing very soon what’s next.”

Thankfully in Austin, things seem to be going okay. The capital city swept the competition with seven stars (one more than Houston now that the change has been made), and two green stars for sustainability — in fact, the only green stars in the state.

Austin also had four of the first-ever barbecue restaurants to be awarded stars. Houston also had one.

Austin's winning restaurants were Barley Swine, Craft Omakase, Hestia, Olamaie, InterStellar BBQ, John Bates, La Barbecue, Alison Clem, and LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue.

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