A meal at Birdie’s is homey and thoughtful, like a backyard dinner party thrown by your very talented chef friend where creative plates keep coming and you can never seem to find the bottom of your wine glass. The food is “New American” in the sense that it’s difficult to pin down the exact influences other than seasonality and stuff that simply tastes good, but that’s not really important anyway.

With only one seating each night at Tsuke Edomae, securing a reservation is not easy. Other spots might feel more celebratory, or provide more value for your dollar. But you’re here to try edomae-style sushi in its purest form—combining a blend of thick-grained rice, aged vinegars, and high quality fish with nothing but wasabi and soy sauce. Each piece is served to one guest at a time, and when your turn comes, it’s just you, the nigiri, and seven curious diners, attentively waiting their turn.

No place is more dedicated to the concept of “local” than Dai Due in Cherrywood. This place does things the hard, Oregon Trail way. That means brined pork chops and 80-day dry-aged ribeyes cooked over a wood-fired grill, wild Hill Country game, and a menu made from locally sourced everything. It’s as Texas as it gets—with a semi-casual formality to match it—and every dinner here is just a little bit different from the last, with a menu that changes nightly.

While most of the pitmasters in Texas argue over who makes the jiggliest brisket, LeRoy And Lewis is looking at the rest of the cow—and it’s cooking all of it. It feels like a love letter to beef, and it’s this broad-minded approach to barbecue that makes it the best way to experience smoked meat in Austin. Everything has a Central Texas-style approach—simple seasonings, low-and-slow smoke, and local meat—and it’s applied to more than just beef.

There’s a distinct Texas twang to Odd Duck on South Lamar. It’s wood smoke, fire, chiles, game, and Gulf Coast seafood, with a menu that riffs on classic Texan dishes like tamales, green chili pork shoulder, or icebox cake. What’s brilliant about this casual and upbeat restaurant is that the menu gets revamped at a rapid-fire pace. From day to day, week to week, every dish is subject to change. It’s the kind of place you go back to over and over again, and it never gets old.

In a city full of so much barbecue, KG BBQ brings something new to the brisket-filled table. This is Central Texas-style barbecue with an Egyptian twist, whether that’s in the form of more subtle influences like za’taar-dusted pork ribs, or the signature bowl that combines turmeric rice with brisket, tahini, nuts, and pomegranate seeds. It’s a place where smoked brisket shawarmas feel less like fusion food, and more like a shawarma that happened to spend its formative years in Central Texas.

Bufalina has been Austin’s original pizza-and-natural-wine spot since it opened in 2013. With bare Edison bulbs and unfinished walls, it always felt kind of like an underground clubhouse, but with esoteric wines alongside classic and sometimes unconventional Neapolitan pies. The pizzas are great, but the devastatingly excellent pastas transform Bufalina from a simple pizza joint into an Italian restaurant worth waiting for a table in a parking lot in the blazing Texas summertime sun.

Uchi is a restaurant that’s earned its reputation by offering a mix of traditional sushi and inventive Japanese fusion dishes at a time when most places thought “Japanese fusion” just meant putting spicy mayo on a tuna roll and calling it a day. While Uchi may have since expanded to half a dozen states across the US, it all started right here in a tiny, renovated house on South Lamar. And there’s no better place to go to see what makes it so special than the source.

Fabrik lets a vegetable be a vegetable. It’s a vegan restaurant that doesn’t rely on Franken-pseudo meats to try and convince you that soy protein is just as good as meat. Instead, they know that a skewer of oyster mushroom grilled over hot charcoal can, in fact, trigger the same rush as any piece of poultry or beef. Just know that by signing up for dinner here, you’ll be buckling in for an inventive five- or seven-course tasting menu that feels a little bit like a plant-based roller coaster.

Set in an old, white house that was probably featured on Southern Living magazine at some point, Olamaie occupies the space in the middle of the Venn diagram between Southern comfort food and classic fine dining. Get there a little early so you can sit on the breezy back porch with a cocktail. But eventually the smell of fresh-baked biscuits—or the fear of Olamaie’s grilled pork chops selling out—lures you in.