Returning Indian Restaurant G’Raj Mahal’s Popping Up at Austin Music Festival Levitation

Shuttered-but-soon-returning Indian restaurant G’Raj Mahal will be previewing its revived menu during Austin music festival Levitation. The restaurant will be serving at the festival’s first-time main space, the Levitation Lounge, at 809 East Sixth Street. Also serving food will be hot dog pop-up Zee’s Wiener System. It runs from Thursday, October 26 through Sunday, October 29 from noon to 7 p.m. each of those days. Access to the lounge is available through free RSVPs.

G’Raj founder and chef Sidney Roberts started the restaurant as a food truck in 2009, and then turned it into a physical restaurant on Rainey Street in 2014. G’raj’s lease was up in January 2020, but the landlord let her operate the restaurant through July 2021, when it closed. In July 2022, Roberts announced that she would be bringing G’Raj back with restaurant group Present Tense Hospitality (Salt & Time, Rosen’s Bagels) in a new location in Blackland at 2207 Alamo Street. The opening date isn’t known at this time.

Roberts expanded with another Indian restaurant Mumtaz Market on South First in 2020, but that closed in 2022 to become a new pizzeria run by Present Tense, Dovetail Pizza, that same year.

Cafe shuttering

Austin coffee shop All Gimmicks is closing in North Austin. Its last day operating within Fairweather Cider’s space will be on Sunday, October 29. The team plans on still operating pop-up cafes as well as reopening at some point elsewhere.

Tracking hotel bar openings

Another day, another downtown hotel bar: the Cambria Hotel Austin Downtown opened its new bar, the Limestone Rooftop, last week on October 20 at 68 East Avenue. The Rainey District bar is found on the 16th floor of the hotel with indoor and outdoor spaces, a global food menu (lamb chops, braised beef cheeks with pomegranate and feta, roasted octopus, and cocktails, as well as plans for live music and DJs.

Tracking Austin food events

Shuttered Austin food truck Fil N’ Viet is hosting a bao cooking class and dinner with pop-up Gan Bei Gals this week. The event includes a class by Fil ‘N Viet co-owners and chefs Kevin Truong and Rosie Mina-Truong, where people will learn how to make steamed and stuffed bao. Then people will be able to eat those bao, plus East Coast oysters, whole roasted lechon, and halo-halo during the four-course dinner. Tickets are $200 and it takes place on Tuesday, October 24 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Made In Studio.

Blackland neighborhood’s Bar Toti is hosting Austin restaurant Bufalina for an Austrian wine event with Bar Toti’s director of operations Celia Pellegrini and Bufalina’s wine director Rania Zayyat. Inspired by Austrian wine taverns, buschenschank, the event will feature wine, charcuterie and snacks by Bar Toti’s Fermín Núñez and Bufalina’s Brooks Wilson. It takes place on Tuesday, October 24 from 5 to 10 p.m.

New American restaurant District Kitchen is celebrating its tenth birthday with two parties this week. Both will include all-day happy hour, food specials, live music, and giveaways. These take place on Tuesday, October 24 and Saturday, October 28 at the South Austin location.

The Texas Farmers Market is hosting its silent auction again this fall, benefitting the nonprofit’s Ag Producer Support Fund and its BIPOC Farmer Scholarship. It runs from Monday, October 23 through Sunday, November 19. It’ll end with Chopped-style food competition where participating chefs Comedor’s Philip Speer and Elementary’s Colter Peck will cook dishes based on unknown-to-them-ahead-of-time ingredients. That takes place at the Mueller location of the farmers market from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.