Fantasy island

Uchi alums spill details on Austin's anticipated Asian restaurant — opening soon

She's Not Here's soft shell crab is served with heirloom tomato, cauliflower, shallot, and Thai basil.

Photo by Nicolai McCrary

Details about one of Austin's most anticipated dining projects have finally been revealed. She’s Not Here, a new Pacific Asian restaurant and bar, will open in late summer at 440 W. Second St., the former home of long-running tapas bar Malaga.

The concept, first introduced with a mixed beverage permit filing and a few mood board images on social media, comes from Ben Cachila and Chris Romero, Uchi alums and two of the partners behind East Austin Chinese restaurant Old Thousand. According to a release, the atmosphere is meant to evoke the French Art Deco atmosphere of early 20th century hotel lobbies with spray-painted flora from local street artist Mez Data adorning the exterior facade.

Inside, the dinner menu continues the tropical theme with playful riffs on traditional pan-Asian flavors. Hawaiian saimin noodle soup is served in a beef tip and clam broth and topped with a chili marinated egg and chicken confit. Tasmanian ocean trout gets a punch from passion fruit and crown daisy, a leafy green popular throughout Asia.

Heartier appetites will likely gravitate towards braised-fried Korean chicken with yuzu-pickled pears, summer squash, and toasted chili oil or Korean-style ribs with a double dose of garlic from pickled cloves and a glaze.

She’s Not Here offers a more casual experience for lunch with grab-and-go bento boxes like a panko-crusted chicken katsu sandwiches with egg and cheddar; toasted sesame onigiri (now you finally have the chance to use the rice ball emoji); and bossam pork belly rolls with seasonal pickles. Austin’s vegan population is well taken care of with a large selection of plant-based and gluten-free sushi.

Although the restaurant is still finalizing the cocktail menu, it will heavily use Pacific Asian flavors such as makrut lime, jasmine, and roasted coconut with spirits such as hibiscus rye, aged rum, and applewood-smoked mezcal. A rep for She’s Not Here tells CultureMap that the final cocktail menu will be released within the next few weeks.

The restaurant will be open 11 am until midnight on most days and until 2 am on Friday and Saturday. If you can’t wait until late summer for a taste of She’s Not Here, the restaurant will be one of the participating eateries at the 2nd Street District’s annual White Linen Night on August 4.

openings

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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