And Many More

Austin Mexican restaurant celebrates 40 years with deals, story contest

For years, Manuels was located on Congress Ave. downtown. Today it lives on up north, off of Jollyville Road.

Forty years ago, in a somewhat unlikely turn of events, a Kansan named Greg Koury started one of the best authentic Mexican food restaurants in town: Manuels. In October 2024, he's celebrating its lasting success, and he's inviting Austinites to join in with some deals and a story sharing competition.

When Manuels opened, it was on Congress Avenue near our present day's 2nd Street District. But there wasn't a 2nd Street District then. There were hardly any businesses on that side of Congress in 1984, barring a nearby Salvation Army.

"When Greg was 30, his girlfriend at the time found the space on Congress," says Koury's wife and restaurant co-owner, Jennifer McNevin. "At the time it was a jazz bar, and it was for lease. He signed the lease ... and after about a year of remodeling, he opened it. At that time, Greg pioneered that end of Congress Avenue. There was nothing there; just a bunch of derelict bars ... He used to have to kick empty liquor bottles away from the entrance!"

Today, this original Manuels location is now closed, and only the Great Hills location remains, which they originally opened up 25 years ago. According to McNevin, Covid hit the downtown restaurant hard.

"When restaurants were allowed to reopen, we chose to only open the location in Great Hills, because that's the one with the outdoor dining patio, and we were required to spread people out by six feet," she says. "Nobody wanted to go back to work either, because everyone was scared."

So they had planned on reopening the Congress location, and they even remodeled it. But problem after problem after problem occurred, and finally they realized they wouldn't ever be able to reopen the original location.

"Had we not had that patio up north, we would have gone out of business completely," says McNevin.

Four decades is a long time for any business — let alone a restaurant — to survive. And it has certainly not always been smooth sailing. Aside from the pandemic of it all, McNevin says the restaurant faced tough times during the stock market crash, the dot com crash, 9/11, and the 2008 recession. "But nothing compared to Covid."

Cut to 2024, and Manuels is coming up on an important anniversary. Though McNevin says it took some time for their original customers to migrate to their location up north, these days they still have their regulars. "We have regulars that have literally been coming in every Friday night or every Monday for lunch since we opened," she says.

And since these guys have been through some stuff over the past few decades, you'd better believe they are going to celebrate this anniversary in a big way.

From October 20 to 27, Manuels will be offering a special three-course anniversary menu for $40 per person. Plus, for the entire month of October, the restaurant is offering drink specials and giveaways, including a new concoction called the "The Manuelian Sunset." It's a blood orange margarita, where $2 of every purchase will be donated to Farm Share Austin and Hill Country Conservancy. This drink will debut October 11.

But what McNevin is most excited about is the Manuels Story Contest, where everyone is invited to submit their favorite memory or story about Manuels for a chance to win a gift card of $1,000, $500, $300, or $100. The top three winners of this story competition will also get an invite to a larger, invitation-only party on October 27 with complimentary cocktails, appetizers, and live music.

Manuels story contest Manuels is inviting patrons to submit their favorite Manuels memories and stories for a chance to win a gift card up to $1,000. Photo courtesy of Jennifer McNevin

"Whenever we're out in Austin, people stop us and tell us their stories about Manuels. So I wanted to give our patrons a creative way to share their memories and stories. And stories are flooding in," says McNevin.

I asked her what her favorite story is about Manuels. And while it doesn't exactly fit into the contest's 400-word limit, it is a cute one.

"When I was 22, I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, and my best friend from college was living in Dallas ... I decided to fly down and visit her. And almost as soon as I got in, she said 'We need to go to Austin. You'll love it.' So we drove down to Austin. It was the first time I'd ever been here before, and the very first restaurant she took me to was Manuels.

"Skip to 13 years later, I'm living in L.A. doing interior design. A girl that I work with says, 'I think you're perfect for my brother.' She told me about him; everything sounded great ... Except that he lived in Austin, Texas."

McNevin was hesitant to start up something long-distance, but the guy did sound pretty great. So eventually, they connected and started dating. Once she got to Austin to visit her new flame, she realized it was Greg, the founder of Manuels, her very first stop in Austin.

The two just celebrated their 20-year anniversary and have been co-running Manuels for just as long. He's the introvert; she's the extrovert. He's good at managing the systems and standards; she's great at face time with the patrons.

"The people is what I love the most about it," she says. "Our staff is amazing, we have seven managers, all of whom have been with us for over 10 years or longer. We have a lot of longtime employees; we're all family.

"It's the old-school model for a restaurant," she adds. "And those are hard to find now. You have to have a passion and a love for it, to keep it going day in and day out, and most restaurants these days have gone corporate and they're all about the profit model..."

As far as what the future holds for Manuels, McNevin is optimistic, but says "it's just one foot in front of the other."

"We don't know what the future holds; we're just doing our best day in and day out. If you love Manuels, the best thing you can do is just keep bringing your friends in to support us."

To submit a story to the Manuels story contest, visit Manuels.com. All submissions must be in by October 20 and winners and finalists will be notified by October 22.

More information is available at manuels.com.

mexican cuisine old austin contest

Belles of the Ballroom

9 Austin bar and venue experts take over popular Old Austin space near UT

29th Street Ballroom/Facebook

Changes are coming at the 29th Street Ballroom, but the goal is to preserve what already makes it special.

The evolution continues at the 29th Street Ballroom, the music venue formerly attached to Spider House Café. It's no secret, Resound Presents CEO and co-founder Graham Williams says, that he and a large team of other industry pros are taking over the space; but now they're ready to talk about what comes next for the venue and adjoining bar.

Although Spider House Café closed in 2020, the Ballroom stayed open, and has continued serving University of Texas students and anyone else who wants to see a show outside of the ordinary: punk shows, burlesque revues, fundraisers, and more. It'll stay open through most of the renovations, scheduled through January of 2025, and is expected to hold a grand opening in March.

Now Resound — one of Austin's top live music organizers, which was itself born from the ashes of another Austin institution — is lending two of its co-founders to managing the space going forward: Williams and Ian Orth. They're joining seven other team members from venues around town, many of them overlapping: Amy Mullins, Brian Tweedy, Jason McNeely, John Yaklin, and Shannon LeBoeuf of Hotel Vegas, Chess Club, Kinda Tropical, Tweedy’s, and Yellow Jacket Social Club, in varying capacities; and Brian Buscemi and Mike Sanchez of the Little Darlin’.

Williams emphasizes that although things will be changing at the Ballroom, the goal isn't to change anything people already love.

"Over the next few months as we kind of ease into the spring, we're using this downtime to revitalize things, decorate, revamp some of the stuff in the venue and the bar, and just kind of get things moving in the right direction," Williams says, "taking what's already popular about the venue and just adding to it, really."

Bar updates
The biggest shift will be turning the bar from an accessory to live shows into its own entity that's open even when there's nothing else going on. Amy Mullins, best known as a co-owner of Yellow Jacket Social Club, is overseeing that transition. She's never operated a venue that is primarily focused on music, and has been enjoying learning more about how to do it; she even worked the door recently when a staff member called out sick.

Mullins echoes Williams in assuring that the change is more about logistics than tone. It'll still feel like Old Austin, but she does express a hope to run more than the "typical venue bar," handing out simple drinks as quickly as possible. She's working on a new menu that includes wine, beer, craft cocktails, and non-alcoholic options like tea, kombucha, or mocktails. Regardless of what's on the schedule on any given night, Mullins says the menu will stay the same.

"There's no drink too complicated for us to make, however busy we are," she says.

Food options
Another goal for the team will be making sure the space works when there's not someone onstage to crowd around. They'll expand the front and side patios and create a food truck food court that features the same trucks that are there now, plus one newcomer. All in all, that includes Yalla Burger & Wings, Gyro Center, Li’l Nonna’s Vegan Pizzeria, Guppy’s Indian Fried Chicken, Waylon J’s BBQ, and Ay Chihuahua Tacos.

The expanded patio will connect to Tweedy's Bar next door, which also has its own food trucks. The idea is to create a space to hang out after shows that feels fit for the purpose. It's possible to stick around after events now, but the layout does create a vague feeling of loitering.

Artist and fan-friendly tweaks
On the entertainment side, Williams says some of the renovations include putting in a new sound system, redoing the green room, updating the facade, and repainting signs. Since the winter is a slower time for live music, they'll be taking advantage of the extra time to work on things before packing the calendar with more events than before. Resound will handle most of the bookings in live music, comedy, and DJ sets, welcoming both national and local talent.

Whatever the details end up being, this team has proved to Austinites that they know how to run venues worth visiting. And since they're all friends and business partners on multiple levels, it sounds like having this many cooks in the kitchen just isn't an issue.

"Some of us have been roommates and known each other since we were young," says Williams. "It's a good mix of people who are all very like minded, so a lot is being brought to the table per decision. So yeah, it's it's really exciting. Sometimes that's not the case. .... But with this project, it's a lot of really great, creative people that are good at what they do [and] they trust each other."

bars live music concerts comedy