two for the show

2 Austin hot spots land on Bon Appetit's prestigious best new restaurants list

Canje made the Bon Appetit list, along with one other Austin restaurant.

Photo courtesy of Canje

UPDATE: Canje has been named in the Top 10 Best New Restaurants for 2022 by Bon Appetit.

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Texas restaurants are well-represented on Bon Appetit’s list of America’s 50 Best New Restaurants for 2022. Seven Lone Star State establishments earn the magazine's approval, including two in Austin:

Birdie’s, a counter service restaurant in Austin known for its seasonal menu and well-chosen list of natural wines
Canje, the Caribbean restaurant in Austin from star chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph

And the other five contenders from across Texas include:

El Rincon del Maiz, a taqueria in Garland that serves vegan tacos on seven different types of corn tortillas
La Onda, chef Victor Villarreal’s Latin-inspired seafood restaurant in Fort Worth that includes dry-aged fish among its offerings
March, the Houston fine dining restaurant dedicated to tasting menus inspired by different regions of the Mediterranean
The Nicolett, a Lubbock restaurant that serves “High Plains Cuisine” in the form of dishes such as elk tartare and house-made pappardelle stuffed with avocado
Reese Bros. Barbecue, a San Antonio food truck that pairs classic Texas barbecue with Mexican-inspired sides

The strong showing represents an improvement over 2019, when only four Texas restaurants made the list. Instead of awarding Best New Restaurants in 2021, Bon Appetit recognized restaurants that showed leadership during the pandemic with its Head of the Table awards, including Houston's Lucille's and its companion non-profit, Lucille's 1913.

Once again traveling the country to select this year's honorees, the magazine's editors express optimism about the state of dining in America. They note that a broader range of immigrant culinary traditions has spread across the country, writing that it means “more Guyanese and South Indian and Palestinian and Indigenous Mexican food for all of us.” They also praise restaurants that are “putting their staff first” by offering improved working environments.

“I hope this list, divided by region and filled with our thoughts on what to order and what to know, acts as an invitation to shake off any skepticism as to whether going out is ‘worth it’ these days,” restaurant editor Elazar Sontag adds.

Each restaurant on the list receives a brief profile along with a list of recommended dishes.

For Birdie's, Bon Appetit notes "the highly seasonal menu of nothing-but-hits from chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel," who co-owns the restaurant with "self-described wine guy Arjav Ezekial." The magazine highlighted the restaurant's minute steak ($32); fresh pasta of the day ($19); and "whatever seasonal snacks and small plates strike your fancy."

For Canje, meanwhile, Bon Appetit notes how chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph is channeling the food of his childhood for the first time in his restaurant career:

"In this chicly tropical and warmly welcoming restaurant, Bristol-Joseph and his team seek to represent not just the country he’s from but the entire Caribbean, with all its layers of influence: African, Latino, Chinese, Portuguese, Indian, and beyond. The results, from the crispy-skinned wild bass swimming in rum butter sauce to the cloudlike, coconut-milk-soaked tres leches cake, are impossible to forget."

From this long list of 50 restaurants, Bon Appetit will reveal its ranked top 10 list on September 14.

awards

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