Austin Restaurant Suerte’s Highly Anticipated Mexican Coastal Spot Este Opens in October

Much-lauded Austin Mexican restaurant Suerte is opening its highly anticipated coastal Mexican restaurant Este in October. The 2113 Manor Road restaurant will debut in the Blackland neighborhood on Monday, October 3.

To prep for opening this new restaurant, owner Sam Hellman-Mass and Eater Austin’s chef of the year 2018 Fermín Núñez traveled to Mexican coastal regions — Ensenada, Valle de Guadalupe, Tijuana, Puerto Escondido, Tampico, and Merida — to develop the menus. And as per Núñez’s main love — masa — there will be plenty of heirloom corn masa items.

This will mean plenty of seafood dishes as well as charcoal-cooked foods, like oysters, aguachiles, fried fish tacos on corn tortillas, grilled shrimp, whole fish, vegetables, and steaks. There will also be desserts from Suerte pastry chef Derrick Flynn.

Drinks will include global coastal wines and champagne selected by general manager Celia Pellegrini, along with cocktails and margaritas created by bar manager Patrick Wasetis

Este physically took over classic Austin restaurant Eastside Cafe, which closed in 2019 after 31 years of operations because owner and co-founder Elaine Martin retired and sold the space to Hellman-Mass. The Suerte/Este also revitalized the on-site garden, now called Este Gardens, with vegetables and bee hives.

The restaurant includes the indoor dining room, bar seating, and a chef’s counter. There will be patio seating along the iconic wraparound patio. The space was designed by architecture company Matt Garcia Design and Delineate Studio. The design includes a special tile created by Garcia and ceramicist José Noé Suro of Cerámica Suro.

Before officially opening Este, Hellman-Mass offered the Manor road space to temporary food businesses to make use of the Eastside Cafe and its Elaine’s Pork and Pie spaces. There was farmers market stand Mum Foods from 2019 to 2020; chef Grae Nonas’s Italian pop-up Le Cowboy from 2020 to 2021 (he is now at Bufalina’s forthcoming East Cesar Chavez space), chef Max Snyder’s food truck Rogue Radish in 2020 (which moved since then and is now at Greater Goods cafe on East Fifth), and a seafood market in 2020.

Este’s hours are from 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and then from 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Lunch hours will be added later.

Hellman-Mass and Núñez opened Suerte in 2018.