COVID-19 Closure

Downtown Austin ramen and sushi spot shutters permanently due to COVID-19

It's the second closure this summer for the Komé group.

The owners of Ni-Komé, the sushi and ramen stall at downtown’s Fareground Food Hall, announced Thursday, August 13, that they will close the location permanently as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the second store the restaurant group has closed this summer, with the popular Daruma Ramen on East Sixth Street shuttering in June.

“We had to send a message to all employees at Ni-Komé that we won’t be able to reopen and we won’t be able to have them back,” says co-owner Kayo Asazu. “That is the hardest part… The sadness that I have is that I couldn’t hire back all the people at Daruma and Ni-Komé, and I’m just wishing the best of luck to [them]. That’s my main concern, and I’m hoping they will be okay.”

Ni-Komé was a satellite outpost in the group’s family of restaurants. It offered an abbreviated version of the sushi menu from their flagship location, Komé Sushi Kitchen, as well as their signature chicken broth ramen bowls from Daruma Ramen. Komé Sushi Kitchen on Airport Boulevard remains open for takeout, and they’ve added the chicken broth ramen to their offerings.

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, Fareground announced it was temporarily closing the food hall. Since then, only Israeli street food stall TLV has reopened at limited capacity, with other vendors like Dai Due Taqueria and Contigo remaining closed for the time being.

Ni-Komé was among Fareground’s original vendors when it opened in 2018, and it is the first since the start of the pandemic to announce it will not be returning.

Ni-Komé adds its name to an increasingly long list of restaurants all over Austin that have permanently closed due to the pandemic and resulting economic upheaval. With longtime Austin mainstays like Threadgill's, and critically acclaimed award magnets like The Brewer’s Table unable to stay in business in the current and ongoing conditions, many fear the industry as a whole is destined for more hardship.

For their part, Kayo and her business partner and husband, Takehiro Asazu, are trying to keep busy and stay creative with their other restaurants.

“I have the same amount of time every day and the same amount of energy, so right now I’m just focusing more energy to the rest of the stores,” says Kayo.

Since pivoting to a takeout model at Komé, Asazu says they are running more daily specials and they’ve added groceries like dry noodles and Japanese snacks to their menu. They are planning to reintroduce delivery service in the near future.

closings

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.

michelin guide awards