“I wanted a place where they could hang out every week.” Arjav, meanwhile, was trying to find a viable plan, running numbers, courting investors, looking in vain for an affordable location. “I didn’t want to cook expensive food that people would eat only once or twice a year,” says 39-year-old Tracy. Soon, they were questioning the entire way they wanted to work and live.

So did the time they spent in Austin, watching the city’s casual, easygoing dining scene. Says 34-year-old Arjav: “Our dream was to open our own place,” a fine-dining Italian restaurant with a wood-burning oven, but the coronavirus scuttled that idea. She wanted to move back to Texas, specifically Austin. In the summer, she stayed with her granny and papaw on their goat and sheep ranch in West Texas. Tracy had grown up in Tomball, near Houston. Naturally, he wanted to return to Portland. Arjav’s family had deep roots in the hospitality business, first in India, where he was born, and then in Portland, where they moved when he was twelve. The squishy sweet was so humongous-four and a half inches in diameter-that most of it went home with me.īy 2018 they felt it was time for a change, but they couldn’t agree on where to move. Now stuffed, I selected a single chocolate chip cookie for dessert. The cooking was spot-on, and, given the side of pan-crisped red potatoes, the plate was a bargain at $32. My much-anticipated steak arrived next, its rosy slices napped in a brandy-rich peppercorn sauce. Another short wait brought an order of cavatelli pasta (the one that looks like tiny hot dog buns) in a well-mannered tomato sauce with wispy curls of Parmesan. Chunky slices of Pink Lady apple and a drizzle of ten-year-aged balsamic vinegar completed the presentation. (How many restaurant playlists include Dire Straits and Thundercat?) After a few minutes, a server delivered my first course, four toasty baguette slices slathered with a fantastic, velvety, shallot-and-sherry-scented chicken liver mousse. I got comfortable and checked Instagram and Reddit for the latest time sinks while an eclectic selection of songs percolated in the background. This might be a fast-casual restaurant, just a few steps above fast food, but it felt far nicer than the norm. “That’s a list of wines by the bottle,” he said. Soon after I seated myself, a server with a carafe of water appeared and pointed to a clipboard attached to my table. I made my choices-including that steak-paid, and was handed a table card holder with a picture of a zebra stuck on top. By the entrance, at a curved counter brightened by a vase of flowers, a helpful server described the day’s dishes and the wines by the glass. The dining room is a simple, attractive space, with a long open kitchen fronted by a counter running down one side, a wooden banquette with striped pillows on the other, and exposed rafters high overhead. the door opened, and we shuffled forward. (Dogs are welcome at the two dozen or so tables in the restaurant’s backyard.) At 4:30 p.m. In the chatty line with me were a couple dozen adults, a napping toddler, and a hyperactive terrier. It occupies a small, freshly painted white brick building in a modest, mostly residential East Austin neighborhood, and ever since opening in July of 2021, the place had been getting local and even national press for its well-priced upscale menu of seasonal American dishes (with Italian and French influences) and its interesting list of wines made from naturally grown (or at least minimally messed-with) grapes. Yet there I was, waiting patiently by myself on the sidewalk in front of a counter-service restaurant named Birdie’s.

Never had I queued up to get a steak in French peppercorn sauce. Over the course of my life, I have stood in line to order cheeseburgers, tacos, and those cute little fried apple pies that McDonald’s used to make.

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