Sprawling Central East Austin Restaurant Closes, Turns Into Private and Pop-Up Restaurant Space

East Austin South Texan restaurant Rosewood Gulf Coast Chop House has closed. Its last day of restaurant service at 1209 Rosewood Avenue was on New Year’s Eve, Saturday, December 31.

Since its shutter, the Victorian building is now being used for private events, according to its website. Food and drinks will be prepared by Rosewood owner and chef Jesse DeLeon and the team.

The space is also being given over to pop-up chefs this month. There’s Malaysian-Tamilian pop-up White Elephant, run by chef Kaci Goff, who moved to Austin from San Diego with the mission of opening her own restaurant. Her dinner takes place on Monday, January 16, with two seatings, one at 5 p.m. and the other at 6:30 p.m.

And then there’s a series of dinners from the Peruvian restaurant Biru Cocina Peruana, run by chef Julio-Cesar Florez. These will be five-course tasting menu meals taking place over the course of six evenings from Friday, January 13 through Saturday, January 28.

Eater has reached out for more information about what’s happening to the restaurant space; watch this space for updates.

Co-owners DeLeon, Chas Spence, and Clark Evans opened the restaurant in May 2018, with a menu that focused on Hill Country, Gulf Coast, and South Texas fare under the name Rosewood. During the early part of the pandemic, the restaurant switched to to-go curbside orders. It revamped and expanded its outdoor area with more seating, and reopened for dine-in service under the new longer name Rosewood Gulf Coast Chop House in June 2020. It also spun off its meal kit services with the new company Rosebud in October 2020. The restaurant closed in August 2022 for general repairs and renovations and reopened in early September that year. It announced this shutter in early December, writing on Instagram that, “New Year’s Eve will be the final time the grill will be fired up under ‘Rosewood Gulf Coast Chophouse’ ownership,” followed by a series of farewell posts highlighting and tagging various staffers.

The restaurant offered both a tasting menu and a la carte dishes, making use of Gulf Coast seafood, meats butchered in-house, and local vegetables. The address takes up a good chunk of real estate atop the hill on Rosewood Avenue, from the landmarked Victorian building with multiple rooms to the outdoor patio to the lawn facing westward.

Rosewood’s physical building is the historic Haynes-DeLashwah House, which dates to the late 1800s. Before Rosewood, the address had been home to East End Wines, which shuttered in 2015, and the now-closed food truck Three Little Pigs.