Powerhouse Coffee Shop and Vegan Food Truck Are Teaming Up in North Loop With a New Restaurant

Essential vegan food truck the Vegan Nom is teaming up with great coffee roasters Barrett’s for a new joint restaurant in North Loop. The new spot, Double Trouble, is taking over the former Mediterranean restaurant Phara’s building at 111 North Loop Boulevard. It’s opening on Thursday, June 1 with limited service until the weekend.

The new restaurant will feature classic and new items from Barrett’s and the Vegan Nom. “Coming from a food trailer background, it’s exciting to work in a much larger space and have new toys to use in my culinary ambitions,” says the Vegan Nom owner Chris Rios. In addition to breakfast tacos, nachos, and burritos, new items he’s planning to include roasted root vegetable tacos, flautas, mole wings, and more.

There will also be a bar with frozen cocktails and mocktails, draft cocktails, and beers. From Barrett’s expect excellent coffee drinks. The restaurant will be open from morning until late at night.

Logistically, the restaurant will have dedicated windows for Barrett’s and Vegan Nom services, where customers will able to order any item from either window, as well as order from their phones at the table (Rios describes the setup as similar to that of Sour Duck Market). It gave away free tacos and coffee at the North Loop Block Party in October 2022.

For its initial service, Double Trouble will only serve coffee from Thursday to Friday, June 1 to 2. Breakfast tacos will start on Saturday, June 3.

Rios, a native Austinite, opened the Vegan Nom as a food truck in North Loop in 2012. In 2016, the truck moved to East Austin, and in 2020, it established and moved to a food truck park with its new sibling food truck, Nom Burgers (which is also vegan). The Vegan Nom is known for excellent tacos and breakfast tacos, and has been teasing a North Loop location for a while.

Barrett’s started as a retail and wholesale coffee roaster before opening a cafe in Highland in 2017. One of the essential coffee shops in Austin, it’s known for creative drinks like a chocolate orange blossom latte and seltzers.

This is the first joint venture for Rios and Barrett’s owner Travis Kizer, though the two have been friends for years as their wives used to work together. “[North Loop is] where we got our start,” said Rios. “It’s our return home. I can’t wait to get it up to running.”

Phara’s, which was known for Mediterranean specialties and hosting belly dancing shows, closed in March 2019, after a few years of struggling to stay open. The space has sat vacant since then.

Similarly, Austin barbecue sandwich restaurant Slab BBQ and brewery Nomadic Beerworks teamed up to open a restaurant and beer bar in Sunset Valley in late 2022.

Double Trouble’s hours are from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

(h/t to Eater tipster Ben Zweig)

Update, June 1, 2023: This article, originally published on October 14, 2022, has been updated to include the name of the new restaurant and its updated projected opening timeline.