Local Wine Pro

Austin wine pro named the best sommelier in Texas

Nathan Fausti wine Olive & June TEXSOM Best Sommelier 2015

Nathan Fausti with Olive & June is taking home the 2015 TEXSOM Best Sommelier title.

Photo by Matt McGinnis

Austin has a reputation for its excellent food and wine scene. That status is continually bolstered with prestigious awards. To add to the growing list of accolades, Nathan Fausti, sommelier at Olive & June, was crowned the 2015 TEXSOM Best Sommelier at the 11th annual Texas Sommeliers Conference (TEXSOM) held at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas.

Fausti is the seventh sommelier from Austin to win the coveted award in the past 11 years. Fausti excelled among 23 other competitors (including two others from Austin) in a demanding three-part wine test involving proper fine dining service, a written exam and a blind tasting. The competition included candidates from Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas who have not yet attained the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Advanced Sommelier certification.

Fausti will soon take the helm as sommelier at Bullfight, a new Parkside Projects restaurant slated to open later this month. He received a scholarship of $2,500 from the Guild of Sommeliers Education Foundation to be used for a Court of Master Sommeliers certification program.

"This year, we opened the competition to sommeliers from adjoining states. Increasingly, the influence of TEXSOM reaches well beyond the borders of Texas, so we felt it was time to include a potentially larger group to participate," said TEXSOM Co-founder James Tidwell. "We offer hearty congratulations to Nathan for winning the competition this year, and look forward to next year’s competition."

David Donalson of Goody Goody Liquor in Dallas, Texas was the runner up and will receive a $1,500 scholarship. The third place winner was Luis La Torre of Spec’s Fine Wines in Dallas.

Fausti joins six Austin sommeliers — Joelle Cousins, Devon Broglie, Mark Sayre, June Rodil, Bill Elsey and Scott Ota — who have previously won the coveted prize.

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NYT loves AUS

Homey Austin bakery Comadre makes New York Times Best Bakeries list

Comadre Panadería/Instagram

Comadre Panadería is known for nostalgic Mexican bakes with feminine flair.

The New York Times has once again shined its spotlight on Austin’s culinary scene. It included Comadre Panadería, an Austin bakery focusing on Mexican treats, on its new list of the 22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now.

Interim food critic Priya Krishna praises pastry chef Mariela Camacho’s pastries that include conchas and her signature pink cake. “Despite their saccharine appearances, not one of the desserts is overly cloying, and even the coffee drinks (Texas pecan horchata! Cranberry vanilla agua fresca!) strike the playful tone of the pastries,” she writes.

Comadre Panadería has been widely recognized, including by this publication; Camacho won Pastry Chef of the Year in the 2023 CultureMap Austin Tastemaker Awards. She also earned a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

Camacho and Comadre as a whole are both invested in using baked goods to make a more equitable world, from the bakery's early days as a fundraiser for disaster relief, to a current insistence on charging enough to support ethical and organic foods, and paying staff enough to keep up with rising costs in Austin.

Mariela Camacho of Comadre Panaderia in Austin Mariela Camacho, Comadre Panaderia. Courtesy photo

The Times also recognized Houston's Koffeteria. Krishna hails the bakery for pastry chef-owner Vanarin Kuch’s creative fare that includes dishes such as beef pho kolaches, Chinese sausage breakfast tacos, and butter mochi.

“Some of Mr. Kuch’s offerings are rooted in his Cambodian American identity — he makes cornbread with the coconutty, scallion-forward flavors of Cambodian street corn — while others are odes to Houston’s multicultural makeup. But most of the fun of Koffeteria is having no idea what Mr. Kuch will do next, and eagerly awaiting his next innovation,” Krishna writes.

Open since 2019, Koffeteria has been riding high this year. It earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Bakery and a CultureMap Houston Tastemaker Award for Pastry Chef of the Year.

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Comadre Panadería and Koffeteria are the only Texas establishments to make the Times’ list. Only California and New York City, which each have three representatives, earn more recognition.

lists media desserts koffeteria new york times