Austin Restaurant Dai Due Closes Its Taqueria in the Fareground Food Hall

Lauded butcher shop and restaurant Dai Due closed its downtown Austin food hall stall Dai Due Taqueria because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The fast-casual restaurant, which was found within Fareground at 111 Congress Avenue, had already been temporarily closed since March.

“After much deliberation and due to COVID-19 hardships, Dai Due Taqueria is permanently closed,” says co-owners chef Jesse Griffiths and Tamara Mayfield through a statement shared with Eater. The restaurant had been one of the original vendors to open with the debut of the food hall in 2017. (Its opening day was so busy that it ran out of meat.)

As a way to keep Dai Due Taqueria’s tacos, flautas, and sopes available, the original Cherrywood restaurant will offer a special menu every Tuesday. These items will also make use of nixtamalized corn tortillas from East Austin restaurant Nixta Taqueria. Dai Due is currently open for takeout and patio-dine in services.

This is the second official restaurant closure at the Fareground during the pandemic. Japanese restaurant Ni-Kome closed back in August for similar reasons, explained by co-owners Kayo Asazu and Takehiro Asazu (who also run Japanese restaurant Kome and Japanese coffee shop Sa-Ten). They also closed down another one of their projects, downtown Austin ramen shop Daruma, in June because of the pandemic, too.

Fareground is run by Austin restaurant group ELM. Currently, the only restaurant open in the downtown food hall is Israeli spot TLV, which is only serving takeout orders. While Emmer & Rye’s fast-casual restaurant Henbit isn’t serving takeout orders, people can still get its popular monster cookies shipped. The rest of the businesses — the downtown branch of Contigo, the Congress Avenue branch of ELM’s Italian restaurant Italic, and two bars — remain temporarily closed.

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