Much Wine! Many Food! And Buzz Burger Debuts, Sway Goes West, It’s a Whole New Lunar Year, and More
By Wayne Alan Brenner, January 17, 2023, 12:34pm, On the Range
Here's some of what's happening in Austin's culinary scene, as wrangled from numerous PR releases, words on the digital street, and even the occasional (verified) IRL eavesdroppings.
Yes, citizen, it’s your “Food News Buffet” for the third week of January, as this new year continues galloping along, much like all of us, toward its inevitable demise.
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And this weekend is the start of the Lunar New Year, as traditionally celebrated in what textbooks like to call the East Asian cultural sphere, and boy howdy do we have some terrific recommendations of dining options for you along those lines…
The Wine & Food Foundation has that Big Reds & Bubbles shindig coming up in February, and they’re looking for a few more volunteers, which might be the best (if not, by this point, the only?) way to experience all the oenophilic festivities of the popular event … but it’s another reason we should mention that omg-they-go-so-fast tickets for the WFF’s Toast of Texas in April will be on sale starting on Tuesday, Jan. 24…
[image-2-right]We told you (sadly) last week that Plow Burger and Brunch Bird were shuttering, but now we get to tell you (gladly) that new food trailer Buzz Burger will be debuting at Buzz Mill Coffee (1505 Town Creek) when that rockin’ joint celebrates its 10th anniversary (Fri., Jan. 20, 10am-10pm) with $10 beer-and-burger baskets and the Sing Your Life Away reunion featuring live music and hosted by Tate Mayeux…
You know our love for the excellent Thai cuisine of Sway is strong, and that we also have an occasional hankering to soak up the splendor of the Texas Hill Country, right? You can imagine our delight, then – and we’ll imagine yours – in hearing that Sway’s chef Randy Magallanez is the head honcho for a night of Thai, Texan, and Chicano cuisine out at Walden Retreats (situated on 96 acres of private land along the Pedernales River), where you can relax beneath the big sunsetting sky (see photo above) while feasting on charred oysters and clams, hot & sour soup, spit-roasted heritage pork, and more. Yes, of course wine pairings will be available! That’s coming up on Saturday, Jan. 28, and you can get tickets right here…
[image-3-right]Let’s see – what else, what else? We’re still waiting to hear from former Chronicle staffer Doug “The Ragin’ Cajun” St. Ament, to find out what he thinks of the limited-time dish of Turtle Gumbo now available at Perry’s Steakhouse… The national Good Food Awards are gearing up for another year, and several Austin and Central Texas purveyors are among the finalists… That Brenner fellow recently took a look-see and a taste-bite at one of the hot pink Ziki kitchens around town and has revealed the company’s plans for Global Foodscape Domination… A year ago this weekend, our Food Editor Melanie Haupt reviewed Tavel Bristol-Joseph’s Caribbean restaurant Canje – and we hear that the place is still very much as she described it…
WUXTRY! Satellite, that friendly eatery at 5900 W. Slaughter, the one that’s operated by those Kamburis brothers who used to run Flipnotics Coffeespace back in the day? They’ve opened the full bar for lunchtime now – from Tuesday through Sunday – because “sometimes Happy Hour needs to come a little early.” We’ll, ah, we’ll drink to that…
Now eat as well as you can, tip like it’s going out of style, and stop worrying about that big asteroid they haven’t detected yet.
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