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Juliet's expansive Barton Springs patio, shown here pre-pandemic, has proven to be a boon.
Romeo and Juliet, one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, is about star-crossed lovers and ends in tragedy. The tale of Austin's own Romeo's and Juliet is a happier one about ships in the night.
In fair Zilker, where we lay our scene, Italian restaurant Romeo's closed abruptly in 2012, leaving a vacant storefront—and large patio—on Barton Springs Road.
Three years later, it reopened as a fine dining restaurant called Juliet. Owner Daniel Wilkins and his wife, Donna, had traveled extensively around Italy and found the former Romeo's location to be the right place for their new venture.
"It's really special to this day," said Emily O'Connor, chief management officer of Veneto Hospitality, which owns Juliet. "We still have people come in and say, 'We met at Romeo's,' or 'We had our first date at Romeo's.'"
(Romeo's Austin/Twitter)
Maintaining relationships with long-term customers has been a long-term focus at Juliet.
When the restaurant first opened, it was a fine dining establishment known as Juliet Ristorante. But in 2017 it underwent a transformation to Juliet Italian Kitchen, an upscale casual spot. "Our food was so complex and our Ristorante name was a mismatch for this street," Wilkins told the Austin American-Statesman at the time.
The new Juliet was designed to be a regular destination for Austinites, rather than a special occasion spot. "It's geared more toward providing this place that people want to come back to over and over again," O'Connor said, citing local institutions such as Matt's El Rancho as inspiration.
Repeat diners have helped keep Juliet afloat during the initial pandemic shutdown and subsequent regulatory changes, ordering takeout and returning to celebrate birthdays and other special events on Juliet's large patio. "It's really heartwarming to see that the success that Romeo's had, that Juliet has that same place in people's hearts, too," O'Connor said.
It hasn't been easy, however.
Prior to the pandemic, Juliet did the bulk of its business in person. When the pandemic began, the restaurant only offered take-out for more than two months. "Every day was a learning experience for quite awhile," O'Connor said.
When Juliet reopened in late May, it had to find ways to make customers feel safe returning in-person—and adapt to constantly changing capacity limits as the severity of the pandemic fluctuated. "We've changed (capacity limits) four or five times," O'Connor said.
Despite the challenges, Juliet was in some ways better positioned than other restaurants to survive the pandemic. In addition to its regular clientele, the restaurant has a lush patio that could seat 135 people pre-COVID. Because it was already focused on casual dining, it didn't have to make the switch, as many fine dining restaurants did, when the pandemic began.
The dining room at the fine-dining Southern restaurant Olamaie, in West Campus, remains closed, but owner Michael Fojtasek has transitioned to special occasion party packs, such as for the Super Bowl, and the successful offshoot venture Little Ola's Biscuits. Other businesses have been less successful, such as high-end spots Second Bar + Kitchen and The Brewer's Table, both of which closed due to the pandemic.
"We're very lucky," O'Connor said.
After a tumultuous year, Juliet will welcome guests—both in-person and for take-out meals—this Valentine's Day weekend, with a special menu and on-theme pink drinks. And the restaurant's prospects are looking up, in a sharp departure from its namesake.
In March, Juliet will open a second location at the Arboretum in North Austin, where it hopes to become a regular haunt for a new crowd. "We want to be part of the neighborhood," O'Connor said. "That's really important for us."
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(Pexels)
If you are a committed, grunge-wearing resident of the Pacific Northwest, it is easy–almost automatic–to look at Texas as an extraordinarily dry, hot and culturally oppressive place that is better to avoid, especially in the summer. Our two granddaughters live with their parents in Portland.
Recently we decided to take the older girl, who is 15, to Dallas. Setting aside the summer heat, a Portlander can adjust to the vibes of Austin without effort. So let’s take Texas with all of its excesses straight up. Dallas, here we come.
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.
(Tesla)
Giga Texas, the massive Tesla factory in southeast Travis County is getting even bigger.
The company filed with the city of Austin this week to expand its headquarters with a new 500,000-square-foot building. The permit application notes “GA 2 and 3 expansion,” which indicates the company will make two general assembly lines in the building.
More details about the plans for the building are unclear. The gigafactory has been focused on Model Y production since it opened in April, but the company is also aiming for Cybertruck production to kick off in mid-2023.
While there is room for expansion on the 3.3 square miles of land Tesla has, this move comes after CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments about the state of the economy and its impact on Tesla.
In a May interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Musk said the gigafactories in Berlin and Austin are “gigantic money furnaces” and said Giga Texas had manufactured only a small number of cars.
And in June, Musk sent a company wide email saying Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10%, then later tweeted salaried headcount should be fairly flat.
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