10-Year-Old Austin Patio Restaurant Contigo Is Closing

Contigo, the MLK patio restaurant in MLK neighborhood with a Texas menu, is permanently closing this month, as announced through its email newsletter today. Its last day of service at 2027 Anchor Lane will be on Thursday, December 30.

Co-owners Ben Edgerton, chef Andrew Wiseheart, and Dana Curley decided it was time to close the restaurant, as they noted in the newsletter. “After 10 years of serving our community, Andrew, Dana, and I feel it is time for us to let Contigo rest,” they wrote. Earlier, they wrote: that “memories are really what it has all been about. We like to say that we are not in the food business, we are in the experience business. We facilitate relationships.”

The trio opened Contigo opened the restaurant in 2011. It grew to become one of Austin’s quintessential dining experiences, with a New American menu that emphasized Texan cuisine (rabbit and dumplings, ox tongue sliders, crispy green beans, the burger), great happy hour deals, and wonderous outdoor patio space.

During Contigo’s time, the team had opened vegetable-focused finer dining restaurant Gardner in 2014 on East Sixth, which they turned into casual restaurant Chicon in 2016, which then closed in 2018. (That space is now home to the Emmer & Rye group’s Caribbean restaurant Canje, which opened this past October.) They also ran a Contigo offshoot in downtown Austin food hall Fareground, which focused on rotisserie chicken, but that closed during the pandemic last year.

Both the restaurant’s catering branch Contigo Catering (helmed by owner and CEO Brooke Greer with executive chef Freddy Diaz) and Hill Country events and cottages estate Contigo Ranch will stay open.

• All Coverage of Contigo [EATX]