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2 Austin restaurants make Texas Monthly's list of best new spots in the state

Texas Monthly says Maie Day "might be the most unexpected steakhouse in town."

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelley

Texas Monthly editor Patricia Sharpe has published her list of Texas' Best New Restaurants in 2023. Numbered one to 10, it’s open to establishments that opened between December 1, 2021 and December 1, 2022, and it must be a restaurant's first Texas location.

Notably, it’s Texas Monthly’s first ranked list of best new restaurants since 2020. Due to the challenges restaurants faced in 2021 and 2022, the magazine shared a longer list of favorite dishes and drinks from restaurants across the state. Now, the article has returned to its familiar format.

After riffing on a few topics, including the rise of shareable dishes — she calls out shared desserts where restaurants “hand you a spoon as if it were a five-year-old’s birthday party” — diners dressing casually at all styles of restaurants, and ever-earlier happy hours, Sharpe finds the overall state of Texas restaurants to be pretty strong.

“This relaxed approach to dining works well with the trend toward creative, mix-and-match cooking, which has been gaining ground for years,” she writes. After describing the various culinary traditions represented on this year’s list — including four French-influenced restaurants — she concludes with an observation, “Cross-cultural cooking used to be dismissed as ‘confusion cuisine.’ Now it’s business as usual.”

Two Austin establishments make Sharpe's top 10: Diner Bar(No. 2), a Southern-inspired restaurant from James Beard Award winner Mashama Bailey, and Maie Day (No. 9), a casual steakhouse from Olamaie chef-owner Michael Fojtasek. Suerte's sister concept,Este, makes the honorable mentions.

Sharpe praises Diner Bar as a "bastion of unpredictability," citing Bailey's seared lobe of duck liver on Texas heirloom grits topped with a dab of sweet strawberry mostarda. "But it's the experiments that dazzle," she write, "like savory-sweet roasted young carrots and dates with an Ethiopian spice mix on a bed of barley and farro. No wonder Bailey won the 2022 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef."

Meanwhile, at Maie Day — which Sharpe says "might be the most unexpected steakhouse in town" — Michael Fojstasek's most exciting dishes are those with a novel twist, such as the ham plate appetizer with buttery cornbread muffins; "What the Fluke" flounder crudo with pickled blueberries and fresh seasonal fruit; and the "far-from-predictable cheesecake."

San Antonio also gets two restaurants on the list — French-influenced Southern spot Restaurant Claudine (No. 4) and French bistro Cullum’s Attaboy (No. 10). Italian restaurant Allora and Mediterranean restaurant Ladino (from Austin's Emmer & Rye group) receive honorable mentions.

Otherwise, Houston restaurants lead the way with three in the top 10. They are seafood restaurant Navy Blue (No. 1), modern Israeli restaurant Hamsa (No. 3), and Pacha Nikkei (No. 6), a restaurant serving Japanese-Peruvian fusion. Southern comfort food restaurant Gatlin’s Fins and Feathers and Mexican-inspired Flora earn honorable mentions.

Up north, two Dallas restaurants make the top 10: Revolver Taco Lounge Gastro Cantina (No. 5) and Au Troisième (No. 8), the French bistro in Preston Center. Chef Nick Badovinus' prime rib restaurant Brass Ram earns an honorable mention. Fort Worth's Don Artemio, the upscale Mexican restaurant in the Museum District, also make the top ten (No.7), while Tim Love’s Italian restaurant Caterina’s and the revamped Paris Coffee Shop make the list of honorable mentions.

In terms of notable omissions, three of the four Texas restaurants that earned James Beard Award semifinalist nominations for America’s Best New Restaurant do not appear on Texas Monthly’s list. They are: Houston Mexican restaurant Tatemó, Dallas sushi restaurant Tatsu, and Restaurant Beatrice, a Cajun restaurant in Dallas.

The full list in order is as follows:

Navy Blue, seafood restaurant in Houston (No. 1)
Diner Bar, Southern restaurant in Austin (No. 2)
Hamsa, modern Israeli restaurant in Houston (No. 3)
Claudine, French-influenced Southern restaurant in San Antonio (No.4)
Revolver Taco Lounge Gastro Cantina, Mexican in Dallas (No. 5)
Pacha Nikkei, Japanese-Peruvian fusion in Houston (No. 6)
Don Artemio, Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth (No. 7)
Au Troisième, French bistro in Dallas (No. 8)
Maie Day, casual steakhouse in Austin (No. 9)
Attaboy, French bistro in San Antonio (No. 10)

lists news-you-can-eat awards maie day best restaurants diner bar james beard awards este suerte top 10

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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