vote the tastemakers

Austin's 16 best new restaurants compete for top Tastemaker Award

Zoé Tong is one of 16 new Austin restaurants competing for Best New Restaurant.

Photo courtesy of Zoé Tong

As exciting as new restaurants are for foodies, they're a huge risk for chefs. Finding success in the first year — while getting staff onboarded, reading first reviews, and waiting for word of mouth to kick in — is a triumph reserved for few.

Far be it from us to judge a restaurant on a few months of work, so we're going off public sentiment. Readers will pick the new Austin restaurant they're most excited about for the Best New Restaurant category in the 2024 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards.

Our judges, including last year's winners, looked at every new Austin-area restaurant since we last voted in February of 2023, and chose the 16 strongest contenders. Those new restaurants will now go head-to-head in a bracket-style tournament.

Voting is open now at this link. People may vote once per round, through four rounds of competition. Round one ends at 11:59 pm on Friday, March 22.

Which restaurant will win? Find out April 11 at the 2024 Tastemaker Awards party at Distribution Hall. We’ll dine on bites from this year’s nominated restaurants and sip cocktails from our sponsors before revealing the winners in our short and sweet ceremony.

You can keep up with all the Tastemaker Award nominees in a special editorial series, then be sure to buy your tickets to see who triumphs.

Here are the 16 nominees (in eight matchups) for Best New Restaurant:

Bill's Oyster vs. Bureau de Poste
"Highly anticipated" doesn't quite cut it for these buzzy openings. Casual environments and fancy eats beckon.

Bill's Oyster: As the name suggests, this New Orleans-inspired raw bar excels in shellfish. Austinites love the food and the lack of pretension almost equally.
Bureau de Poste: Enjoy steak frites on your grocery run. Attached to the cultishly popular Tiny Grocer, Bureau de Poste whips up classic French food in a renovated post office.

Bacalar vs. Ezov
These restaurants have taken hyper-specific inspiration from one town or city outside of the United States.

Bacalar: This fancy downtown restaurant is inspired by Bacalar, Mexico. It draws a parallel between the Lake of Seven Colors and Austin's Town Lake, right outside.
Ezov: Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group's Ezov is inspired by the markets of Tel Aviv and the bounty of Texas, drawing parallels between agriculture in both regions.

Gràcia Mediterranean vs. El Raval
These Mediterranean restaurants both take special inspiration from Spain; one branches out, while the other zeroes in.

Gràcia Mediterranean: From hummus to halloumi, this calamari-serving restaurant with a Catalan name is all over the region. An extensive beverage list further blurs borders.
El Raval: It replaced South Lamar's beloved Barlata, but it's still holding the Spanish torch. The extensive menu includes five paellas, including a daily special.

Elementary vs. Fabrik
Just about every chef wants to be creative, but these two restaurants take it to the next level in accessible fine dining.

Elementary: Referencing primary school and elevating comfort foods, Elementary is getting creative with food and hopefully teaching a lesson in the process.
Fabrik: This entirely plant-based restaurant is doing something new for Austin. It's walking away from bowls and burritos in favor of adventurous, coursed meals.

Alma By Stephan Pyles vs. Uchibā
One of these restaurants is known for sexy nights out; the other is just as luxe in a surprising locale.

Alma By Stephan Pyles: Located in a luxury assisted living community, this fine dining restaurant by pioneering chef Stephan Pyles impresses diners across generational divides.
Uchibā: This Uchi spinoff focuses on bar offerings like raw fish, yakitori, and cocktails. As casual as that may sound, the dining is still incredibly sleek.

RedFarm vs. Zoé Tong
These two upscale Chinese restaurants with critically acclaimed New York roots opened on the same day in November.

RedFarm: RedFarm, the first outpost of a popular New York restaurant, immediately impressed Austinites with its sometimes whimsical "modern Chinese" cuisine.
Zoé Tong: This Chinese restaurant by a pair of former New York chefs focuses on fusion of pan-Chinese styles and Austin values. (See: sticky barbecue ribs.)

Ramen Del Barrio vs. Soupleaf Hot Pot
Soup is a cultural constant. Although they're very different, these two Asian soup spots keep things casual and delicious.

Ramen Del Barrio: Austinites are understandably excited about this rare Japanese-Mexican fusion. Fans of an underdog will appreciate that it's located in a grocery store.
Soupleaf Hot Pot: Even hot pot-lovers express surprise at the superior quality of this all-you-can-eat spot. Guests marvel at the sheer number of scoop-your-own veggies.

Allday Pizza vs. Poeta
Menu items represent very different price ranges, but the Italian hospitality prevails in both.

Allday Pizza: It's thin-crust pizza on a paper plate. The craft speaks for itself, with nothing to hide behind — not even the popular wine bar it partners with.
Poeta: When the team behind Intero opened Poeta, they emphasized the stay-all-day attitude. Although the dishes are upscale, Italian cooking will always feel homey.

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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.

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