rare treats

Have tongue, will travel: An interview with Noble Pig's John Bates

When John Bates and Brandon Martinez, the chef-owners behind the Noble Pig, opened up shop in September of 2010, they were just a quaint little sandwich joint in a strip mall on 620, 30 minutes from downtown Austin.

Pretty soon, news of their house-cured meats and artisanal charcuteries, fresh-baked breads, homemade pickles and condiments... well, spread. Almost two years later, their crew has grown from three to 11, and they are now serving upwards of 600 covers out of their 400 square-foot kitchen.

Recent spots on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives and Man vs. Food have lines wrapping around the building, and as soon as permitting allows, they plan on knocking down walls to add 20 more seats to their current count of 26.

I sat down with Bates to discuss the restaurant’s growing success and Austin’s evolving tastebuds.

CultureMap: How did you and Brandon cross paths?

John Bates: Me and Brandon knew each other from culinary school in Corpus Christi. I met him in ’98. [This is] probably the third or fourth time we’ve worked together in the same restaurant. After we’d done our schooling, Brandon took off to Vermont to go through some more education at the New English Culinary Institute and then ended up in San Francisco cooking.

I stuck around south Texas for a while, then ended up in Portland, Oregon and I cooked out there for several years. I wanted to get closer to family, so I moved to Austin and Brandon ended up in Austin at the same time, just coincidentally.

I had been cooking at Wink for a while, I was a sous chef there, and then I took the chef position at Asti. Brandon was cutting meat and doing sausage production at Whole Foods at that point.

CM: How did you end up going into business together?

JB: I wanted at some point to venture out on my own. I had pursued a couple different opportunities and none of them really panned out, and then finally, I decided to go ahead and leave Asti and just dedicate myself full-time to opening up my own place. That’s kind of when I approached Brandon.

I wanted to partner up with somebody that I knew had a great work ethic, that could bring other things to the table and, you know, somebody I could get a long with really well. So we decided to pair up on this place and get it up off the ground.

CM: How did you choose 620 as your location?

JB: I live out here, but it was really more of an exercise of being frugal. Because, when you’re a chef, you meet all these people and they all tell you that they want to help you open up a restaurant. "Whenever you’re ready, give ‘em a call." And when you call 'em, nobody ever wants to do it. You know, it’s like the great, golden goose out there where people tell you they want to help out and so rarely do they ever want to — especially when you’ve never been the owner of a restaurant.

So, at the end of the day, when it really came down to it, all the people who told me they were willing to help me out all bailed. So I was like, "Okay, here’s my real budget, and I can’t afford to be in central Austin. . .So where am I going to open up my restaurant that I can afford that is not where everybody else is?"

So you start looking around and the funny thing about this area is that there’s a ton of people out here who all drive into central Austin to get food and go out to eat! This area is terribly underserved, and the cost of doing business out here is fantastic compared to central Austin. It fit all the things that I’d been told made sense of business and I could afford to do it.

CM: How do you think Austin’s food scene has changed in the past two years?

JB: Austin’s funny, it’s at an interesting point. It’s becoming a great food destination, and I think it’s finally catching up with bigger cities. You’re seeing people do great food at low-end places and middle of the road places and high-end places.

A mature, modern food city should have good food at all levels. It shouldn’t just be high-end food — there should be people making quality food from scratch at all price points. To me, that’s when you realize you’re in a great food city. You see that in Portland and Chicago and San Francisco and New York; I think that’s happening in Austin now, and I’m really stoked about it.

CM: What inspired Noble Pig?

JB: [The restaurant] reflects a lot about my time in Portland and great food places that weren’t expensive. The Portland dining public was getting really excited about little holes in the wall run by chefs who gave up the chef coats and the multi-course format and wanted to open up gutsy little bistros or little neighborhood restaurants, where it was bold food, but it wasn’t expensive or fancy. So that was what got me excited about doing this kind of price point.

And then, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to make for family meal in nicer restaurants. I always wanted to do duck pastrami sandwiches. And I always wanted to do, instead of doing classic BLT, a pork belly BLT.

A lot of it too is just the stuff me and Brandon want to eat, you know? These are the kind of sandwiches we would make ourselves, like if we were going to have friends over to the house. We grew up in south Texas, in Corpus Christi, so we’re very fond things like barbacoa and lengua and tripas. We try to find ways to incorporate them into our food, as well. And the fact that I’ve been able to sell beef tongue — and it’s one of my better sellers — is a testament to what’s going on out there.

CM: You just hosted a July dinner party paring each course with beer. Can you talk a little bit more about your monthly dinner parties?

JB: That dinner party is all about me expressing myself as a chef. They are right now, as they have been from day one, my pursuit of pleasure as a cook. And I’m fortunate that we can fill it up on a monthly basis with people that are here to essentially participate in the dinner party.

It’s a rare treat for a chef to be able to have 36 people in and not have anybody ask for special instructions. I write a menu, it is what it is, we serve it as it is, everybody gets their dinner at the same time, we all arrive at the same time. And it’s so much fun for me.

I’ve been in high end restaurants for a long time, that’s my background for the most part, so I want to stay connected with that as well. It’s not just about sandwiches for me, it’s about all kinds of cooking, so it’s a great opportunity for me to do things I’m excited about.

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For menu and more information on Noble Pig and their monthly dinner parties, visit www.noblepigaustin.com

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Belles of the Ballroom

9 Austin bar and venue experts take over popular Old Austin space near UT

29th Street Ballroom/Facebook

Changes are coming at the 29th Street Ballroom, but the goal is to preserve what already makes it special.

The evolution continues at the 29th Street Ballroom, the music venue formerly attached to Spider House Café. It's no secret, Resound Presents CEO and co-founder Graham Williams says, that he and a large team of other industry pros are taking over the space; but now they're ready to talk about what comes next for the venue and adjoining bar.

Although Spider House Café closed in 2020, the Ballroom stayed open, and has continued serving University of Texas students and anyone else who wants to see a show outside of the ordinary: punk shows, burlesque revues, fundraisers, and more. It'll stay open through most of the renovations, scheduled through January of 2025, and is expected to hold a grand opening in March.

Now Resound — one of Austin's top live music organizers, which was itself born from the ashes of another Austin institution — is lending two of its co-founders to managing the space going forward: Williams and Ian Orth. They're joining seven other team members from venues around town, many of them overlapping: Amy Mullins, Brian Tweedy, Jason McNeely, John Yaklin, and Shannon LeBoeuf of Hotel Vegas, Chess Club, Kinda Tropical, Tweedy’s, and Yellow Jacket Social Club, in varying capacities; and Brian Buscemi and Mike Sanchez of the Little Darlin’.

Williams emphasizes that although things will be changing at the Ballroom, the goal isn't to change anything people already love.

"Over the next few months as we kind of ease into the spring, we're using this downtime to revitalize things, decorate, revamp some of the stuff in the venue and the bar, and just kind of get things moving in the right direction," Williams says, "taking what's already popular about the venue and just adding to it, really."

Bar updates
The biggest shift will be turning the bar from an accessory to live shows into its own entity that's open even when there's nothing else going on. Amy Mullins, best known as a co-owner of Yellow Jacket Social Club, is overseeing that transition. She's never operated a venue that is primarily focused on music, and has been enjoying learning more about how to do it; she even worked the door recently when a staff member called out sick.

Mullins echoes Williams in assuring that the change is more about logistics than tone. It'll still feel like Old Austin, but she does express a hope to run more than the "typical venue bar," handing out simple drinks as quickly as possible. She's working on a new menu that includes wine, beer, craft cocktails, and non-alcoholic options like tea, kombucha, or mocktails. Regardless of what's on the schedule on any given night, Mullins says the menu will stay the same.

"There's no drink too complicated for us to make, however busy we are," she says.

Food options
Another goal for the team will be making sure the space works when there's not someone onstage to crowd around. They'll expand the front and side patios and create a food truck food court that features the same trucks that are there now, plus one newcomer. All in all, that includes Yalla Burger & Wings, Gyro Center, Li’l Nonna’s Vegan Pizzeria, Guppy’s Indian Fried Chicken, Waylon J’s BBQ, and Ay Chihuahua Tacos.

The expanded patio will connect to Tweedy's Bar next door, which also has its own food trucks. The idea is to create a space to hang out after shows that feels fit for the purpose. It's possible to stick around after events now, but the layout does create a vague feeling of loitering.

Artist and fan-friendly tweaks
On the entertainment side, Williams says some of the renovations include putting in a new sound system, redoing the green room, updating the facade, and repainting signs. Since the winter is a slower time for live music, they'll be taking advantage of the extra time to work on things before packing the calendar with more events than before. Resound will handle most of the bookings in live music, comedy, and DJ sets, welcoming both national and local talent.

Whatever the details end up being, this team has proved to Austinites that they know how to run venues worth visiting. And since they're all friends and business partners on multiple levels, it sounds like having this many cooks in the kitchen just isn't an issue.

"Some of us have been roommates and known each other since we were young," says Williams. "It's a good mix of people who are all very like minded, so a lot is being brought to the table per decision. So yeah, it's it's really exciting. Sometimes that's not the case. .... But with this project, it's a lot of really great, creative people that are good at what they do [and] they trust each other."

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