The pie's the limit

Favorite East Austin pizza joint bakes up new location and neighborhood market

East Side Pies will soon be available in all directions.

East Side Pies/ Facebook

East Side Pies is heading in a new direction. In the next few months, the popular pizza joint will be renovating its original shop, opening a new market, and adding a new location to the family.

According to ESP office manager Mikey McCarthy, the restaurant is currently in the process of revamping its first shop at 1409 Rosewood Ave. and adding indoor seating and a larger patio. The owners are also hard at work building out the space next door, the former home of Trailer Space Record Shop, and turning it into a corner market.

McCarthy says the concept and name of the market are still being finalized, but the shop will serve bottled and draft beer that can be enjoyed on the patio along with the restaurant’s pizza. The space will serve coffee, pastries, and cookies. The team expects the market to be open by the end of December.

The mini-chain, which has additional locations on West Anderson Lane and Airport Boulevard, also announced it will be heading north to 13265 US-183 to open its next shop. “It was time that that part of Austin had some East Side Pies,” McCarthy tells CultureMap.

McCarthy says East Side Pies jumped at the chance to expand to a different part of town after being contacted by the team at Amy’s Ice Cream, who own the shopping center. In addition to an Amy’s location, the strip also has an outpost of Phil’s Icehouse and indoor skydiving chain iFly.

Offering the same menu for dine-in or delivery, the eatery will be BYOB for the immediate future. McCarthy says the team is aiming to have everything up and running by the end of September or early October.

And as CultureMap previously reported, the pizza joint will also be flying to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to open a shop near the Salt Lick BBQ between gates 10-11 in December. That kiosk will offer 10-inch versions of the restaurant’s most popular pies.

Despite all the explosive growth, the company says it will stay true to its roots, both in using regionally sourced ingredients and in being true neighborhood concepts — the international customers at ABIA notwithstanding. “We hope to tap into what everybody needs,” says McCarthy.

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Top Chef

Austin Top Chef winner debuts new National Geographic series during SXSW

Courtesy National Geographic

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Austin is proud to claim chef Kristen Kish as our own, but the Top Chef winner has always had a global mindset. She first earned her chops in French and Italian cuisine at Boston's acclaimed Menton restaurant, infusing those influences into the menu at Arlo Grey with a pioneering curiosity and adventurous spirit. Now, she's bringing that explorer's mindset to a new National Geographic series, debuting Tuesday, March 21.

Available on Disney+, Restaurants at the End of the World is a docuseries in which Kish travels to off-the-beaten-path pockets of the planet. The four-part series follows Kish as she searches for the secret ingredients – people, places, culture and traditions – within the world’s most remote restaurants in Boquete, Panama; Svalbard, Norway; North Haven Island, Maine; and Paraty, Brazil.

A lucky selection of South by Southwest (SXSW) attendees got a sneak peek of the series at a special dinner on Tuesday, March 14. The event took place inside Arlo Grey at the Line Hotel, where Kish mingled with guests and introduced clips from the upcoming series. A family-style dinner featured dishes inspired by different episodes of the series, from Maine-inspired Parker House rolls to Arctic char and strawberry semifreddo.

"This series is all about shared experiences and trading stories," Kish said, introducing the evening's menu. "So, when putting this menu together, I realized there are a lot of similarities. When I think back to all the places I went and new things I learned, there are so many familiar flavors to every bite that can bring you right back home into your own story."

The menu celebrated each location in the upcoming series, often in the same course: Parker House Rolls (with delicious whipped brown butter) were a nod to her New England episode ("Maine Island Barn Supper,"), paired with a scallop crudo commemoration of her time in Brazil ("Brazil’s Floating Feast,"). Meanwhile, the main course gave guests a glimpse of the great lengths Norwegian fishermen go to when harvesting Arctic char, accompanied by a clip of Kish's adventures with local purveyors in Svalbard, Norway.

The aim of both the dinner and the upcoming series is to showcase the tenacity it takes to run restaurants in such remote places. Each episode follows Kish behind the scenes with local purveyors, farmers, herders, kitchen crew, managers, and head chefs to hear their stories. She invites viewers along with her in the hunt for the best and freshest ingredients, unearthing the culture and heart behind global cuisine and showcasing the balancing act required to bring unique food to the table around the world.

“Food has an unparalleled power to bring us together and teach us about one another and the world around us, and we see that firsthand by going to restaurants in the world’s most remote areas,” says Chef Kish via release. “Filming this series with National Geographic was an adventure of a lifetime that taught me so much about an industry I’ve been steeped in my whole life. I can’t wait for viewers to come along on the journey with us and experience these dishes at restaurants most never even knew existed.”

The first episode of Restaurants around the World will be available on March 21 at 9 pm CST.

Courtesy National Geographic

Top Chef winner Kristen Kish has a new National Geographic show debuting on March 21.