Hi friends, ACL’s two weekends at Zilker are over. So this week’s Do is downtown: three days of food and dancing on East 11th Street.
Before that, a French bistro on South First that both Michelin and Bon Appétit have noticed. After it, a free tree for anyone with room for one, a Pilates studio with a cold plunge answering my three questions in Meet, and a birthday party for the library, which turns 100. Rowena Dasch, who leads an 1856 house museum in West Campus, is this week’s Awesome Austinite.
One place to eat, one thing to do, and one thing to know, as always. Here is your weekend.
Eat, this week
South First Street · dinner Thursday to Monday, 5 to 10pm · most mains $37 to $42
Le Calamar is a French bistro with a Texas accent on South First Street, and it has had a year: it is on the Michelin Guide’s Austin list as Recommended, and Bon Appétit put it on its Best New Restaurants list for 2026. The room used to be Underdog, a Korean wine bar from the same owners, Richard Hargreave and Claudia Lee, who remade it with chef Casey Wall. Michelin says it “has the bistro vibe down pat,” and Bon Appétit calls it “straight-up fun.”
The menu changes daily with what the farms and the boats bring in, so take these as a guide. Bon Appétit says it seems every table orders the stuffed chicken wings à la Koffman, deboned and filled before they finish on the grill, and Michelin says the gnocchi Parisienne in brown butter ($16) “gives main dish energy” for a side. The Wagyu bavette with sauce au poivre is $37, or the whole table can do the $77-a-person prix fixe. Dinner is Thursday through Monday from 5 to 10, and it is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. There is no phone, so book on OpenTable or walk in and try for a seat at the bar, and the restaurant validates two hours in the garage below. One honest caveat, from the restaurant itself: vegan is very difficult here.
Do, this weekend
St. Elias Orthodox Church, East 11th Street · Friday to Sunday · $5 donation, free Saturday from noon to 4
St. Elias Orthodox Church has held its Mediterranean festival since 1934, when it began as a bake sale on a sidewalk, and this weekend is the 92nd one, on the church grounds just east of the Capitol. The festival calls itself the longest-running in Austin. It is three days of food from Lebanon, Palestine, Greece, Eritrea, and Russia, from gyros, kibbeh, and spanakopita to baklava and Arabic coffee. There is a marketplace for henna and jewelry, a Kids’ Oasis with face painting and a bouncy house, and dancing to Arabic, Greek, and Romanian music after dark.
It runs Friday from 6 to 11pm, Saturday from noon to 11pm, and Sunday from noon to 6pm. Getting in is a $5 donation at the gate, kids 10 and under and college students with an ID are free, and on Saturday everyone gets in free from noon to 4. Bring a card rather than cash, because the festival says it is not taking cash. Parking is free on Friday and Sunday in State Garages A and F on Trinity Street, a short walk away, as long as you pick up a validation code at the festival. On Saturday those garages charge their usual rates. One thing about that free Saturday window: Texas plays Florida at 11am at DKR, less than a mile north, so expect game-day traffic downtown into the afternoon. If dancing is the point, go after dark on Friday or Saturday.
Know, this week
If you have a yard with room in it, here is something free to put in it. NeighborWoods, the program TreeFolks runs with the City of Austin and Austin Energy, is giving away 7,000 five-gallon trees this season, starting this month and running through March. City of Austin residents and Austin Energy customers can apply to have a tree delivered, while supplies last. The conditions are fair ones: you are promising to water it regularly for at least its first two years, and to plant it somewhere it has room to grow.
The faster way is to pick one up. On Saturday, TreeFolks is at Eco Fest at Bartholomew District Park on Berkman Drive from 11am to 1pm. There is no registration: show up, choose a tree, and take it home, up to two per household for city residents and Austin Energy customers, first come, first served. Read the program’s Right Tree, Right Place guide before you choose, and if you want mulch to go with it, the city’s Recycle & Reuse Drop-off Center gives it away free, by appointment, as long as you load it yourself.
Meet, this week
Haus of B. Pilates is a studio in Old West Austin, and its first answer is the one to read if you think you know what a Pilates studio is: “Along with Reformer and mat Pilates, we have a heated infrared mat room, strength training, a sauna, and cold plunge.” What I liked most was the second answer, which says “the goal was to make it feel less like walking into a traditional gym and more like walking into a place you actually wanted to spend time.” Its pick for after class is Blenders & Bowls, “an easy post-Pilates stop.”
Awesome Austinites
One person who makes something here, in her own words.
Photo courtesy of NCHM.
Rowena Dasch, executive director of the Neill-Cochran House Museum. The museum is an 1856 house in West Campus, near UT, that tells Austin’s history through the people who lived and labored there and in Wheatville, the nearby freedom colony. It is also the steward of the only intact and accessible slave dwelling left in the city. Originally from Houston, she came to UT for graduate school in 2000 after an advertising job in New York she found soul-sucking, and stayed for the temperate winters and the laid-back pace. Since 2013 she has worked to turn the house into a space for community, with art exhibitions, live music and theater, and Moth-style storytelling alongside its lectures, and she says it now draws more than 10,000 visitors a year. Next, she says, “In November we are bringing Murder Mystery theater to the museum for the first time.” It runs November 5, 6, and 7.
Asked what she would tell someone who moved here last week, she said this: “When the time is right (there needs to be water), hit the Barton Creek Greenbelt for a swim at Sculpture Falls. After all these years in Austin, I think that is the most incredible part of this city, a lagoon in the midst of an urban center. There often isn’t water, but when there is, it’s like you’ve found a secret garden.”
Dish of the week
Photo by Ranch 616.
Ranch 616 · Jalapeño maize chicken
This week’s dish is the jalapeño maize chicken at Ranch 616 on Nueces Street, sent in by the restaurant, which puts it simply: “If you want to understand Ranch 616, start here.” The restaurant says Kevin Williamson, its late chef and owner, created it for the opening menu, and that it has been keeping regulars happy for more than 25 years. On the menu now, it is chicken crusted in corn tortilla with cilantro, garlic, and jalapeño, served with Ranch rice, charro pinto beans, and chipotle sauce, for $24.
One more thing.
The Austin Public Library turns 100 this year, and on Saturday it throws itself a birthday party at the Central Library on César Chávez Street, from 10 to 5, free and open to everyone. The library started in 1926 in a rented room upstairs at 819 Congress Avenue, with 500 donated books. It runs all day. Austin’s poet laureate, Zell Miller III, reads at 11 and 1, and there is live music from Blue Dot Swing at 10 through Sriyam at 4, plus a typewriter type-in, a tree ID tour, caricatures most of the day, and a birthday scavenger hunt for kids. The garage under the building is entered from West Avenue, the first hour is free, and the library does not validate.
See you next Thursday.
P.S. If Le Calamar is booked the night you want it, my date night guide ranks fourteen more, with how far ahead each one books and which ones take walk-ins.