Food for thought

Fino, Lenoir & Noble Pig come together for a multi-course dinner to supportlocal chef

Though Austin's food scene is ever growing, at its heart it's still a close-knit community, an extended family that rallies together when one of its members is in need. Next Sunday, July 22 it will do just that.

Fino, with the help of a few good friends — Noble Pig, Dai Due, Antonelli's, Lenoir, The Leaning Pear — will host an extravagant multi-course dinner on Sunday, July 22 with all proceeds going to the Stephens family.

For one night, Fino Restaurant (which is normally closed on Sundays) will become the home to a special benefit dinner for local chef Tabatha Stephens and her husband, Bobby. Currently the sous chef at Dai Due, Stephens has a long history in Austin's restaurant scene, having worked her way through many of its most loved kitchens, including Fino's sister restaurant, Asti.

Recently the Stephens lost their ten-week-old son, Holden, to a rare genetic disorder. As the family grieves, the restaurant community is coming together to help ease the burden of mounting medical costs.

Each restaurant will prepare one course of the meal in the Fino kitchen, while cocktails will be crafted by the Alamo Drafthouse's Bill Norris. The event, which is being organized with the help of the Wine and Food Foundation, will also include a silent auction featuring items from Uchi/Uchiko, The Austin Chronicle and many more.

Just as the food community rallied to donate time and resources for the Stephens Family Benefit Dinner, the greater Austin community response to the event has been overwhelmingly positive. Tickets, which are $125 a piece, are in high demand and expected to sell out quickly.

If you're interested in attending the event, or giving an additional donation to the Stephens family, you can visit the Wine and Food Foundation website.

unspecified

Peak Plates

7 Austin restaurants make OpenTable's top 100 for 2024

Jeffrey's Restaurant/Instagram

Jeffrey's Restaurant is a great example of the type of fancy, well-established restaurant that made the list.

Restaurant reservation website OpenTable has issued its new list of the top 100 restaurants in America for 2024, and seven Austin restaurants have made the list. That's already impressive at a glance — 7 percent of the entire national list in just one city — but compared to other Texas cities, it's huge. Austin is the only Texas city to have more than one restaurant on the list.

The "2024's Top 100 Restaurants" list is a compilation of the most sought-after and top-ranked restaurants in the U.S. based on 14 million verified reviews on OpenTable from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024. Restaurants are not ranked, but arranged in alphabetical order by state.

Austin's seven restaurants (including several repeats from OpenTable's 2023 list) are:

Aba: Known for its laid-back, yet fancy patio and being a popular spot for visiting celebrities
J Carver's: Known for a commitment to the classic steakhouse experience and legitimately fancy dining
Jeffrey's Restaurant: Known for fine dining, a connection to Austin before its boom, and a fantastic wine program
Red Ash Italia: Known for approachable, yet high-quality Italian food with rustic touches
Sammie's Italian: Known for its romantic take on the archetype of an East Coast Italian joint
Uchi: Known for bringing Austin into the national sushi conversation and defining the scene
Uchiko: Known for a cool atmosphere and getting creative with sushi and other small plates

Austinites will probably not be surprised by this list, which names some very well-established restaurants that are all upscale. These qualities tend to appeal to similar lists, regardless of who's curating them.

It is interesting, given that the list was democratically based on user ratings, that there were not more beloved food trailers or casual spots. However, other factors that led to high rankings included alerts set and reservations made ahead — things that don't really apply to even the most awesome taco truck.

Mediterranean food was a trend among the Austin picks. Red Ash Italia and Sammie's Italian are, as the names would imply, completely dedicated to Italian food, while Aba covers a wider swath of the Mediterranean. There were also two steakhouses: J Carver's and Jeffrey's Restaurant.

As list-perusers may have guessed, Uchi and Uchiko are in the same family of restaurants, with Uchi being the more formal and Uchiko being a bit more accessible for drop-in meals and cocktails. But are two more incognito duos of sibling restaurants on the list: J Carver's and Red Ash, and Jeffrey's Restaurant and Sammie's Italian.

That could be a coincidence. It could also be a reflection of the utility of money and experience in opening a good restaurant, or a lesson about the effects of good (and expensive) marketing. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like hospitality groups had any direct sway on how OpenTable made its choices.

This list was different from the inaugural list of OpenTable Icons, which launched in 2024. The "Icons" list chose restaurants that are getting a lot of buzz, which ended up being more subjective. It also seemed to let in — as a side effect of the process, rather than a hard eligibility rule — more new and Mexican restaurants. Two restaurants are on both lists: Red Ash and Jeffrey's.

Restaurants outside of Austin that made the Top 100 list, organized alphabetically, are:

Hudson House — Dallas
Steak 48 — Houston
Signature — San Antonio

awards bests media lists