When word got out, a local real estate firm helped broker a new, five-year contract. ![]() The next year, the lease was running out, and owner Will Tanner was considering shutting down due to the rise in rent. In 2012, local celebrity chef Paul Qui built a ramen outpost of his popular East Side King franchise in the back room, but that closed down in 2015. Later generations watched Spoon, Fastball, the Texas Tornados, and more. Early patrons shot pool to the sounds of Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley, among other outlaws, pickers, and rockers, like the inescapable Stevie Ray Vaughan. It’s hard to think of a single Austin act that hasn’t graced one of the two stages at Hole in the Wall, but it has been a time-honored tradition for regulars to name-drop the acts they’d been lucky enough to catch. That was the turning point from sports bar to live music venue.” “She agreed,” Cowles says, “but on the condition that all the televisions be turned off while she was playing. According to Hole in the Wall Events Coordinator Lynn Cowles, MA ’10, PhD ’15, founder Doug Cugini was dating musician Nanci Griffith and asked her to play a few songs one day. True to its name, the little beer joint and music venue has remained on the Drag since 1974, when it opened, first as a sports bar housed only in the front room that faces Guadalupe Street. Hole in the Wall clearly possesses some timeless appeal-and was even iconic enough to warrant a segment during Jimmy Fallon’s visit to campus in 2019. The sign flicked back on and the doors reopened, suitably, just in time for a UT home football game against Oklahoma State. A group of investors including the granddaughter of founder Paul Joseph, Kristyn Ciani, took ownership and announced that they’d be reopening by the end of the month. 9, 2019, the buzzing neon sombrero went dark. The idea was to move on to other parts of life, and not because of any “external factors,” like a slowing of business, they wrote in a press release.Īnd so, on Aug. Joseph, who handed the reigns over to his children, David, Renee, and Roseann, who ran the restaurant until August 2019, when the family announced they were closing it down. It was a family joint, started by Paul C. They served a thin, tangy salsa often referred to today as “restaurant-style,” and leaden plates of cheese-soaked goodness. For decades, it famously doled out complimentary saltine crackers to thrifty undergraduates. Senate, and a decade before he would beat Barry Goldwater for the presidency. “You are advised to come hungry and order modestly,” the blog stated in 2008.Įl Patio opened in 1954, the year Lyndon B. It serves what Taco Journalism, a blog-turned-TV-series, called a “rock-solid” version of that true Tex-Mex bellwether: cheese enchiladas. For decades it has sat under the glowing neon sign of a Mexican sombrero where West 30th and Guadalupe Streets come to a T. It’s the kind of place where you remember the servers and they remember you. And if we’ve learned anything, one thing the UT community has liked for decades, and probably will continue to like for decades more, is a massive plate of enchiladas. ![]() In knowing these spots, we might also learn a bit about the character of the university, namely its collective likes and dislikes. ¶ Using this criteria, a few exemplary businesses can be identified. That is, it should remain open for at least several years before shuttering-flash-in-the pan favorites will have to wait. It should primarily serve the university community, and it should last through the machinations of student preference and economic vacillation. But first, let us define our parameters: A campus institution should be within walking distance of the main campus. After the emotional rollercoaster of El Patio’s cl-opening saga, we felt compelled to check in on our most beloved campus haunts and take their collective pulse. ¶ The places that stay in our memory, places that last for decades, have something different, something ahistorical and enduring. And, ultimately, their cries were answered-more on that later. They raged against the dying of the neon, sombrero-shaped light. ¶ Institutions belong to the community, and the Austinites and Texas Exes that strolled the Drag for years on their way to that Tex-Mex beacon weren’t satisfied to let the crispy tacos and combo plates go gently into that good night. ![]() It’s a rarity on the periphery of campus, an area that has seen many cafes, taverns, and movie theaters open and close amid a few mainstays. UT students had come and gone, but they all remembered the same place, same feel, and same melted yellow cheese. This past summer, when the news that one of these institutions, El Patio, would be closing its doors after 66 years, there was a multi-generational outcry. Restaurant isn’t just a restaurant after six-plus decades-it’s an institution.
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