And from the legal beat…

Posted on October 3, 2025 by dwightbrown

The Razzoo’s Cajun Cafe chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday.

I like Razoo’s, but it has been a minute since I’ve been to one. The nearest Razoo’s to me is not just in Round Rock, but way the heck up in Round Rock.

Razzoo said its bankruptcy filing was fueled by some of the same things that have led other larger and smaller operators to do the same, including changing consumer behavior and inflation. Unlike everyone else, however, the Texas company also pointed out two other culprits:

Joe Biden? No.

Key competitors, specifically Chili’s and Applebee’s, “aggressively” marketed themselves and their value-leaning promotions, which shrunk Razoo’s foot traffic.

Neither of these places serve Cajun food, and Applebee’s has also fallen on hard times. I can’t really see Applebee’s/Chili’s/Razoo’s as being fungible, so I’m not sure why they’re saying this.

Razzoo also said that while crawfish season has started earlier in 2025 than 2024 (has it?), increased competition has forced it to drive prices down and thus, revenue.

Interesting. I don’t have any idea about the crawfish season, though I guess if I wanted to, I could go through my emails from Stuffed (recommended) and try to figure it out. But that would require effort.

Also interesting:

Also interesting was Razoo’s mention that it didn’t own any real estate. Its monthly rent obligations for its stores are around $650,000 a month. In more than a few discussions I’ve had with operators this year, owning property has been one of the big talking points; some business owners, like Ronnie Killen, have culled their portfolios because they prefer owning the land beneath their restaurants.

Looks like that one in Round Rock is still open, but the article mentions the sudden shutdown of one in Corpus Christi.

Posted in Cajun, News | Leave a comment

More closings!

Posted on September 27, 2025 by dwightbrown

Schmidt Family Barbecue in Bee Cave is closing October 4th.

I’ve been there a few times, both for dine-in and takeout. I’ve always thought it was just a kind of average barbecue place. My mother still complains about the time she went in, got two slices of brisket, and was charged $18. I think this was before “thanks, Joe Biden”.

Schmidt is also the only barbecue place in the Lakeway/Bee Cave area: the next nearest one, to the best of my knowledge, is either the Rudy’s on 620 or the one on 360 (I’d have to check Apple Maps to see which one is actually closer). For that reason, I think this is kind of a shame, but I also feel confident that someone’s going to open another barbecue place in that spot.

We also have a Maple Street Biscuit Company in Bee Cave. I did not know Maple Street was owned by Cracker Barrel.

And guess what?

Reporting its fourth-quarter financial results earlier this month, Cracker Barrel revealed the planned closure of 14 Maple Street Biscuit Company locations. That amounts to roughly 21% of its company-owned stores for the fast-casual brand, which Cracker Barrel acquired in 2019 for $36 million.

…

Maple Street Biscuit Company, founded in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2012, largely escaped getting swept up in the negative publicity. The brand has locations mostly in the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas.

Probably because nobody knew they were owned by Cracker Barrel.

Fast Company pieced together their own list of closed locations, as the company has not released one. It looks like the one in Bee Cave is spared, for now. But most of the closures are in Texas.

Posted in Barbecue, Breakfast, Closed | Leave a comment

Food news roundup.

Posted on September 6, 2025 by dwightbrown

A few small bits of food news I’ve been meaning to get to:

Sam’s BBQ has closed. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently, nobody seems to know for sure.

Sam’s is a fairly famous East Austin barbecue joint, perhaps best known as Stevie Ray Vaughn’s favorite. We ate there once for an SDC, and I was not impressed.

The Abuelo’s TexMex chain and their parent company, Food Concepts International, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

If memory serves, there was an Abuelo’s over near Barton Creek Mall that I ate at a few times. There’s also one in Tulsa within walking distance of the hotel that the S&WCA uses. I remember thinking it was pretty decent TexMex.

I did not know:

Pappas Restaurants purchased On the Border after the latter filed for bankruptcy. Brava Brio Restaurants also filed for bankruptcy—its second time this year.

I thought On the Border was a Brinker Group restaurant, but apparently I’m way behind: Brinker sold them off in 2010 to “Golden Gate Capital” who sold them in 2014 to “Argonne Capital Group”.

Brava Brio runs “Bravo! Italian Kitchen” and “Brio Tuscan Grille”. We used to have a Brio up at the Arboretum (used to have an On the Border up there, too) and we went there a few times with Lawrence. I always thought the food was good, but a little bit pricy. The Brio closed a few years back, and I disremember what’s in there now.

Posted in Barbecue, Closed, Mexican | 1 Comment

This is what you get…

Posted on August 28, 2025 by dwightbrown

…when you run your business on Toast.

McGuire Moorman Lambert Hospitality has taken over operational management of Easy Tiger, the bake shop and beer garden that got its start on Sixth Street downtown and currently operates locations at the Linc (6406 N. I-35) in North Austin and on 3508 S. Lamar Blvd. in South Austin.

…

MML has already revamped the menu at the Linc, with a returned focus to kolaches, house-smoked meats, sausages, pretzels and more of the Germanic-Texas-inspired food that was part of Easy Tiger’s original identity. The new menu is posted online at easytigerusa.com.

Posted in German, Gripes | Leave a comment

600 Degrees Parmer Location Closed

Posted on August 26, 2025 by lawrenceperson

Riding my bike past, I noticed that the 600 Degrees Pizza (formerly Slapbox Pizza) on Parmer at Lakeline Blvd. had closed. We ate their once, and thought the pizza was pretty good, but the layout of the restaurant was bad, with the kitchen in the middle and two lobs of seating connected by a single line of booths against the wall. I don’t even believe in Feng Shui, but that was an example of bad Feng Shui.

I thought I would mention it, because even though Google Maps no longer shows it, the company’s own website does. Might want to fix that. guys.

We recently ate at the Cedar Park location, and while the food was still decent, it takes a more sports barn approach, so, meh.

Edited to Add: Looks like something called Happy Slice Pizza is moving into this space. We’ll try to give them a try next year after they’ve been open a while.

Posted in Closed, Pizza | Leave a comment

Quick news update.

Posted on August 7, 2025 by dwightbrown

A Panera Bread in Houston has shut down.

Wait, did I say “a Panera Bread”? I meant “15 of them”.

And the franchise owner has filed for bankruptcy.

And Panera corporate says that they revoked the franchise, but the owners kept running the Paneras illegally.

Records show EYM Café began operating the 15 locations in 2019 and in May 2025, Panera Bread filed a lawsuit against the franchisee, accusing them of repeatedly breaching its franchise agreements by failing to make required payments, maintain food safety standards, and pay vendors and landlords.

…

According to court filings, Panera alleges that EYM’s payment issues began surfacing in February 2025. It says inspections by Panera reportedly uncovered “multiple food safety issues” and violations of brand standards at multiple cafés. Notices of default and termination were sent for at least 10 stores between March and May, the suit says.

In other news, DipDipDip Tatsu-Ya is closing. I’ve eaten at Ramen Tatua-Ya a few times and like it, but I never went to DipDipDip, even though I really like shabu-shabu. Part of the reason for that was I heard DipDipDip was expensive.

Lawrence attributes the closing to DipDipDip being in one of our “Restaurant Sites of the Damned”, where nobody seems able to keep an establishment in that space. I’d attribute it to 1) expensive and B) I think it is hard to sell people on hot pot when it is 100 degrees outside. Then again, the ramen places seem to be doing okay, and DipDipDip was open for six years…perhaps the ramen was subsidizing the shabu-shabu, and the owners reached their limit with that?

Posted in Closed | Leave a comment

Passing notes.

Posted on June 4, 2025 by dwightbrown

I don’t cover a lot of Houston food news, since I don’t live there. But:

“Infamous Houston restaurant is getting the documentary treatment”.

The restaurant in question is the Turkey Leg Hut, which seems to have had a rather colorful history. I find this noteworthy because:

a) I want to see the documentary.
II) This seems to be one of those rare examples of the Chron (or other media outlets) using the word “infamous” correctly.

Rudi Lechner’s Restaurant has closed. This makes me genuinely sad. There are not, in my opinion, enough German restaurants. Mike the Musicologist told me a lot about Rudi Lechner’s, and I finally got a chance to eat there when the NRA Annual Meeting came to Houston. It was everything it was represented as, and I looked forward to eating there again.

Related: “Why have multiple older Houston restaurants closed recently?“

Posted in Closed, German, News, Television | Leave a comment

Barbecue law update.

Posted on May 19, 2025 by dwightbrown

The insurance fraud charges against La Barbecue have been dropped, per the Statesman.

(Previously.)

Technically, if I’m reading this right, only the charges against Alison Clem have been dropped: the charges against LeAnn Mueller were apparently dropped after her death.

Posted in Barbecue, Meta, News | Leave a comment

Obit watch: May 19, 2025.

Posted on May 19, 2025 by dwightbrown

Jeff Blank, massively influential Austin chef.

Opened in 1984 on a then-two-lane stretch of RM 620 near Lakeway, Hudson’s on the Bend was one of the first restaurants in Central Texas to explore and celebrate regional Texas cuisine. The pastoral restaurant, built in a 1948 limestone ranch house perched on a hill dotted by cedar trees and juniper bushes, helped change the way people thought of fine dining in Texas.

…

Hudson’s on the Bend may have been the boldest of the new regional cuisine practitioners, serving an exotic menu that over time featured venison, antelope, wild boar, partridge, pheasant, guinea fowl, quail and alligator, along with seafood and more traditional proteins.

We ate a couple of birthday dinners there, and it was a swell joint: expensive, but worth the money.

Blank, who bought out Rausch in 1992, operated the restaurant from 1984 until 2016, when he sold it to a group that would be the first of several to make failed attempts at filling the shoes of the singular personality.

We never tried any of the attempts to reboot Hudson’s, though. Right now, that space is being converted into a Wahoo’s Fish Tacos.

Lawrence pointed out to me the obit for Ed Smylie, the man who put duct tape to the highest and best use ever: saving the crew of Apollo 13.

“If you’re a Southern boy, if it moves and it’s not supposed to, you use duct tape,” Mr. Smylie said in the documentary. “That’s where we were. We had duct tape, and we had to tape it in a way that we could hook the environmental control system hose to the command module canister.”

…

The adapter worked. The astronauts were able to breathe safely in the lunar module for two days as they awaited the appropriate trajectory to fly the hobbled command module home.

The Museum of Ice Cream in the Domain in Austin. I guess they just couldn’t come to terms on a new lease, and will be closing when the current one expires. We talked about having some corporate events there, but never actually did. And it seems kind of expensive: $30 will buy me more Amy’s Ice Cream than I can, or should, eat.

Biderman’s Deli off of Far West. This was their last standing location. I went there a few times with Mom: I think she liked their Reuben, and I know I liked their bagels and lox.

(Crossposted from WCD.)

Posted in Closed, Deli, Fine Dining, News, obituary | Leave a comment

Fark you. Fark the horse you rode in on. Fark everyone who looks like you. And fark every horse that looks like the one you rode in on.

Posted on July 4, 2024 by dwightbrown

Popular fast-casual pizza chain Mod Pizza could soon be filing for bankruptcy — following in the footsteps of several other well-known US restaurants, according to a new report.
The company, which has locations in 28 states, is preparing a potential bankruptcy filing and could enter court protection as soon as next week, sources told Bloomberg Wednesday.

Good.

Previously on why I hate Mod Pizza. I know it’s going to be popular to blame Bidenomics for this, and there may be some element of that involved. But when I first started going there, it seemed like they had a better selection of higher-quality toppings. Since COVID, it seems like both the number of available toppings and the quality of toppings have declined. Add to that the service issues and we’re all just better off supporting our local pizza places.

Decent concept, poor execution.

Posted in DIAF, Gripes, Pizza | Leave a comment