z’tejas and the death of the casual restaurant
I don’t think that I need to tell anyone who lives in Austin that there’s been a rapid growth occurring for years now that’s led to a complete paradigm shift in the culture and ethos of the city at large - if you live here, you feel it with every new condo that pops up, every celebrity and tech billionaire that moves here, and every demoralizing Zillow search you do in some futile attempt to make the dream of owning property here seem like less of a fantasy. In my world, however, there is no greater indication that the soul of the city is changing than what I feel when an institutional bar or restaurant closes. Don’t misunderstand me, not every restaurant closure is a tragedy that deserves to be mourned; for every great restaurant in this city, there are four restaurants that should be condemned - be it by the greater collective of consumers or, more often, by the health department. Though I am prone to these philosophical musings with or without any specific lighting rod to catch my ceaseless stream of opinions, on this specific occasion, we do gather here to mourn the loss of one of the greats.
Friends, today we say goodbye to Z’Tejas.
I know that there are still a couple of Z’Tejas location out there; hell, they’re about to open one in Kyle and they confusingly opened up another one in Avery Ranch across the street from where Moonshine took over the Z'Tejas that used to be there before the company famously plummeted into bankruptcy. But Z’Tejas in its original glory began on West 6th street in Austin, Texas on a strip of land now primarily owned by restaurant titans McGuire Moorman Lambert Hospitality, and it is here that we now see this great loss unfold in front of us. Relatively new owner of the enduring franchise, Randy Cohen, recently announced that due to the relationship between high rent prices on his primo West 6th street real estate and growing cost of overhead in an aging building, that he would be closing the original Z’Tejas location after 33 years in business at some undisclosed time in the next six months.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you may be thinking “how the hell did that old dinosaur even make it this long?” and that’s a great question that I only possess more of a hypothesis about than any evidence backed answer. See, Z isn’t the only Austin restaurant that began in that era that has survived off of the city’s bad habit of making an institution out of anything that has been around long enough to revive any notion of the great original Austin zeitgeist that countless corporations and real estate sharks have been trying desperately to capitalize on for decades. In the wake of COVID, I hired several late-blooming Z defects that told tales of labor abuse and hellish working environments that, assuming some good faith in their accounts, should’ve been enough to justify the end of this restaurant franchise much earlier than the slow burn of “success” in the business world that they continue to enjoy. I could name other restaurants that I feel similarly about, but I will refrain from doing so for the sake of peace keeping with my fellow service industry kinfolk. That said, due to my hyper-specific hospitality career, I have a tennous, but undeniable connection to the charming old relic that is Z’Tejas because I spent nearly a decade working for the man himself: original Z’Tejas executive chef, Jack Allen Gilmore; so one could say this one is a little different for me.
In 2012, a younger, less jaded version of me wandered into a hotel hiring center in Round Rock, Texas across the street from where my parents lived to apply for a job bussing tables at the highly anticipated second location of Jack Allen’s Kitchen in the aforementioned sleepy Austin suburb that would see considerable growth over the course of the following decade. During this time, I would become comically familiar with the lore of Z’Tejas since not only was nearly every member of the management and executive team a Z expat, but so were countless members of the staff who had been waiting for them to open a Jack Allen’s Kitchen closer to the Avery Ranch and Arboretum locations so they could also defect as their leaders all had. I would spend the next ten years opening and working at seven of their restaurants and learning everything I could about the business from these seasoned veterans as a busser, food runner, server, expediter, line cook, dishwasher, manager, and even a brief stint as a sous chef that we don’t talk about. My training was militant, intense, and highly rewarding. From these men and women, I learned everything that I needed to in order to spread my wings and leave earlier this year on to another opportunity with a young, promising restaurant group. But throughout all of this time, there was always a strange juxtaposition to reckon with that, in some ways, guided a lot of us who had cut our teeth with Jack and company to work harder: if this restaurant developed so many of their systems and practices from Z and been so successful with them, what happened to make Z so bad over the years and, furthermore, how do we stop ourselves from going down that same trajectory?
But what if I had been mistaken? What if my perceptions of this once reputable restaurant group had been pushed into a negative light more so because of my anecdotal experience than by any basis in reality? To be totally honest, I hadn’t ever considered that until very recently when upon hearing the news that the original location of Z’Tejas was closing, I decided to take my partner and my kids down to West 6th and enjoy a final bite at the old stomping grounds of so many from my old stomping grounds. My partner, also being a former member of the Jack Allen’s Kitchen brigade, was similarly ready to have a subpar experience in the name of reliving some nostalgic Austin classics. That said, the experience that we had there was… not at all what we were expecting.
When we walked in the shabby front doors of Z'Tejas on West 6th Street, we were greeted by a clearly busy, but otherwise, very friendly and accommodating server who promptly got us seated. Whenever I go to any restaurant, my restaurant manager brain is in full effect. I immediately start looking for any signs of the restaurant being dirty or disheveled and, though the place was clearly a bit old and out of shape, there weren’t any perceivable signs that it wasn’t at least getting some routine cleaning. The walls were lined with picture frames containing callbacks to a different time featuring lots of old staff/former colleagues of mine and an empty TV mount or two which definitely re-enforced the thought that “oh yeah, this place is definitely closing soon”. We were greeted by a lively and speedy server named Scotty who was confident and competent in a way that I hadn’t been led to believe existed in spaces such as these anymore. He got us our rounds of water and a topo chico for me to remind me that I’m not drinking right now and left us to our devices to laugh about how many very familiar dishes we saw on the menu that Jack had clearly been the architect of. But even our jaded career restaurant worker sensibilities couldn’t remove the shock we shared at how expedient everything was, how much greater the quality of service we received from Scotty was in comparison to that of which we’ve received at *much* nicer restaurants in the city, and most of all, how tasty everything we ordered was. After all was said and done, I was left feeling like everything I had believed about this place was wrong. Now frankly, I don’t really challenge that I was totally incorrect for most of that time - after all, I had eaten at one of these before and, even though it was some time ago, I know what kind of experience that I had. I do believe that when the new ownership took over a couple of years ago, that they probably had some sort of an effect on an uptick in quality.
So that begged the question: why then? Why was such a surprising, but well-known gem that had survived over thirty years in this city going under? I mean, I’m sure that they had sustained some injuries from a somewhat bad reputation they had taken on in previous years, but if my experience on this day was even somewhat reflective of the archetypal Z’Tejas experience, surely I wasn’t the only one who had some good opinions about the old relic. That question lingered only for a few more minutes when the check was dropped. For two appetizers, two quality kids’ entrees, two adult entrees, two topo chicos, and an iced tea, we were staring down the barrel of about $70 before tip. For those of us who are somewhat uninitiated, getting out of a restaurant with quality food and service for less than $100 is nearly unheard of in this part of the city. Up until this point, I couldn’t help but believe that the aforementioned reasons for closing this restaurant were being met by an unspoken intersection of a quality downturn driving away customers exacerbating the rising costs of rent and building upkeep. But on this itemized thermal paper receipt, I had not only a clear-cut answer to any question I had regarding the reason for Z’s death, but also, a confirmation of a fear I’ve had about the restaurant scene in urban areas for some time now: restaurants that charge these sort of reasonable rates can’t survive doing so in these areas and there is no longer a place in the sprawl of big cities for the mid-level restaurant.
On David Chang’s Hulu program, “The Next Thing You Eat”, he describes a future in which the mid-level restaurant has ceased to exist and instead, we diners of the world have hospitality culture that heavily enforces a line of demarcation between casual and fast-casual restaurants that exist in a lower price range and put a greater emphasis on delivery and carryout orders than on in-house service versus fine dining and casual-fine dining restaurants that are much more “experience oriented” and serve as the last bastion of the full-service hospitality experience that we currently know. While I think Chang makes a really solid argument the evidence of which is already presenting itself in the modern world, I think he missed a really key piece of the puzzle here, which is the fact that this will likely only apply to bigger cities. You’ll still be able to get your Red Lobster fix in Everytown, USA. We’ve already seen that corporate chain restaurants have been on a decline for years, but there will always be a demand for a relatively cheap, full-service, sit-down meal in smaller suburban and rural areas that we just don’t have in the heart of Austin. Other mid-level restaurants that remain steadfast survive off of a bustling to-go program or survive off of location like Hula Hut or Ski Shores, but in the coming years, you will see fewer and fewer exceptions to this incoming reality as more and more casual restaurants succumb to the reality that they will only entertain success if they commit to establishing themselves in sleepier parts of town.
As a career diner, this does sadden me. I’m no stranger to the higher-end, experience-oriented restaurant - hell, my partner and I both work in these types of restaurants nowadays - but, as a parent to two young children who I would like to raise to be competent and polite diners, I’m being afforded fewer and fewer opportunities to show them the right way without breaking the bank. This is just one more thing that puts the changing (read: wealthier) demographic in big cities at an advantage over we working class folks; while they get to enjoy the convenience and excitement of big city living, we’re being pushed into the outskirts and suburbs just so that we can attempt to continue enjoying any sort of quality of life without utmost regard for rent prices and $35 burgers.
Perhaps Z’Tejas is just a victim of circumstance in this regard. Perhaps anyone in my tax bracket is also falling victim to the rising tide that pushes us into the background. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic and uncharacteristically nostalgic about a common restaurant closure. Feel free to draw whatever conclusion you feel appropriate, dear reader, but whatever you do, heed my premonitions and enjoy your Chili’s on 45th and Lamar while it still yet breathes - nothing lasts forever in this city, but the lifespan of the restaurant that has never seen a James Beard award is getting shorter and shorter with every day that passes. One day, you’ll have to drive to Buda to get onion rings at a sit-down restaurant, but for the time being, I’ve included a small list of mid-level restaurants that I like/love that you shouldn’t let the new face of the city trick you into forgetting about.
Cheers, y’all.
