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Austin is host to several late night eats, including taco staple Tyson's Tacos. (Tyson's Tacos/Facebook)
For the Live Music Capital of the World, it can be surprisingly tough to find good 24-hour joints to grab a bite after a night out or a show.
While some Austin staples—Kerbey Lane, Epoch Coffee, Bennu Coffee and Magnolia Cafe to name a few—have adjusted their hours due to COVID, there are still plenty of iconic eats ready to fuel you through all types of all-nighters.
Here's some 24-hour restaurants to satisfy any late-night craving around Austin:
The Buzz Mill, 1505 Town Creek Dr.
Open 24/7, this Austin staple has been feeding Riverside with vegetarian eats since 2013. Grab a coffee by day and a craft beer come nighttime while choosing from a variety of Beyond Meat burgers and breakfast options. You don't have to go out at all beforehand, either—Buzz Mill brings the entertainment to you with live music, open mics and more events on their outdoor patio.
Zombie Taco, 25512 Guadelupe St Unit 100
A favorite for UT students, Zombie Taco offers the classic late-night staple: tacos and burritos—just off campus on The Drag. The one-stop-shop comes stocked with a full bar and outdoor patio perfect for a night out and breakfast for the morning after.
Voodoo Doughnuts, 212 E 6th St.
Lodged in a prime location on Dirty Sixth, this gourmet doughnut shop has been a haven for late-night munchies for countless Austin partiers. The Portland-based chain offers flavors that are much more appetizing than they sound—"Dirt" and "Dirty Old Bastard" are just a few examples—as well as classic donut shop fare.
Bring your cash and your appetite when you go—the restaurant is cash-only but has ATMs onsite.
La Mexicana Bakery, 1924 S 1st St.
Family-owned and operated for more than 27 years, La Mexicana Bakery is home to "the best Mexican bread in Austin" 24/7. The bakery is home to oven-baked bread, cakes and pastries, savory items like breakfast tacos and BBQ and is conveniently located at the center of town.
Tyson's Tacos, 4905 Airport Blvd.
This 24/7 Hyde Park location embraces "Keep Austin Weird" culture while serving up 37 tacos of all varieties. Grab a bite for breakfast, lunch and dinner on their aesthetic outdoor patio.
Las Cazuelas, 1701 E Cesar Chavez St.
Las Cazuelas is the only non-24/7 restaurant on the list—it's open 24 hours Wednesday-Sunday—but it more than makes up for it with its classic Tex-Mex options for any late night out.
Jim's Restaurant, Multiple locations
(Jim's Restaurant/Facebook)
"There's always Jim's," as the restaurant's motto goes, to satisfy your cravings with classic diner fare. From chicken fried steak to stacks of pancakes, the San Antonio-based chain's three Austin locations are readily available for any late-night wanderer.
The Classics: Waffle House, IHOP, Whataburger
Every Texan's rite of passage is eating in a Whataburger at 3 a.m., and with 18 locations around Austin, the Texas-based burger chain is readily available to Austinites craving a late-night snack.
Other classic favorites include Waffle House and its slightly classier sister, IHOP, both of which bring early-morning breakfast options well into the night.
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(Pexels)
Our 15-year-old granddaughter and her sister, 12, have spent summer weeks with us, usually separately so that we could better get to know each individually. In visits focused on Austin and Port Aransas, the girls seemed to be developing an affection for Texas.
Houston and Dallas are two great American cities, the 4th and 9th largest, each loaded with cultural treasures, each standing in glittering and starchy contrast to Austin’s more louche, T-shirts and shorts ways.
Three hours up I-35, Dallas loomed before us as a set of gray skyscrapers in a filmy haze, accessed only through a concrete mixmaster of freeways, ramps and exits. I drove with false confidence. Be calm, I said to myself, it will all end in 10 minutes under the hotel entrance canopy. And it did.
The pool at the Crescent Court Hotel in Dallas. (Crescent Court Hotel)
We stayed three nights at the Crescent Court Hotel ($622 a night for two queens), a high-end hotel in Uptown, patronized by women in white blazers, business people in suits, and tall, lean professional athletes, their shiny Escalades and Corvettes darting in and out, and other celebrities like Bill Barr, the former attorney general who shoe-horned his ample self into a Toyota.
Each morning as I walked to Whole Foods for a cappuccino, a fellow identified by a bellman as Billy the Oilman arrived in his Rolls Royce Phantom. Where does he park? “Wherever he wants to. He likes the Starbucks here.”
We garaged our more modest set of wheels for the visit. We were chauffeured for tips by Matt Cooney and Alfonza “The Rev” Scott in the hotel’s black Audi sedan. They drove us to museums, restaurants and past the enclaves of the rich and famous. In Highland Park, The Rev pointed out the homes of the Dallas Cowboys' Jerry Jones and Troy Aikman along with the family compound of the Hunts, oil and gas tycoons.
The Dallas Museum of Art’s “Cartier and Islam” exhibit (until Sept. 18) attracted an older crowd; the nearby Perot Museum of Nature and Science was a powerful whirlpool of kids’ groups ricocheting from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the oil fracking exhibit. Watch your shins.
A Geogia O'Keeffe oil painting called "Ranchos Church, New Mexico" at the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art. (Rich Oppel)
For us, the best museum was the Amon Carter Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth, a 50-minute, madcap drive away via a 75 mph toll lane along I-30. Don’t try it during rush hour. The Carter has an exquisite collection of Remington paintings and sculptures and an excellent array of 19th and 20th-century paintings as well. Pick one museum? The Amon Carter. Peaceful, beautiful, uncrowded, free admission and small enough to manage in two hours.
The Fort Worth Stockyards, a place of history (with a dab of schmaltz), fun and good shopping, filled one of our mornings. The 98 acres brand the city as Cowboy Town, with a rodeo and a twice-daily (11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) cattle drive. We shopped for boots, drank coffee and watched the “herd” of 18 longhorns. So languid was their progress that if this were a real market drive the beef would have been very tough and leathery before it hit the steakhouse dinner plate.
The cattle drive at the Fort Worth Stockyards. (Rich Oppel)
But we could identify: the temperature was 97. “I saw a dog chasing a cat today,” said the emcee, deploying a very old joke. “It was so hot that both were walking.”
With limited time, we chose three very different restaurants:
- Nobu, in the Crescent Court Hotel; Jia, a modern Chinese restaurant in Highland Park; and Joe T. Garcia’s in Fort Worth. Nobu’s exotic Japanese menu set us back $480, with tip, for four (we had a guest), but it was worth it.
- Jia was an ordinary suburban strip mall restaurant, but with good food and a reasonable tab of $110 for four.
- Joe T.’s is an 85-year-old Fort Worth institution (think Matt’s El Rancho but larger), a fine Mexican restaurant where a meal with two drinks was $115.
Sushi at high-end restaurant Nobu. (Crescent Hotel)
It was all a splurge for a grandchild’s visit. Now we will get back to our ordinary road trips of Hampton Inns, where a room rate is closer to the Crescent Court’s overnight parking rate of $52. And to corner cafes in small towns.
Did Dallas change our 15-year-old’s view of Texas? “Yes. I think it’s a lot cooler than I did. The fashion, the food.” So, not only Austin is cool. Take Texas as a whole. It’s a big, complex, diverse and wonderful state.
