JewBoy Burgers Brings Its El Pasoan-Jewish Sliders to Downtown Austin

El Pasoan-Jewish Austin restaurant JewBoy Burgers is opening its fourth new location in downtown Austin. The second JewBoy Sliders will be found within the downtown food hall Fareground at 111 Congress Avenue starting on Monday, April 24.

The new JewBoy menu will be a combination of its three locations — the original burger restaurant in North Loop, the sandwich shop in Brentwood, and the slider truck on East Sixth — and still remains unkosher. This means sliders, including the existing ones from the truck, and two new ones: pepper jack cheese-bacon-barbecue sauce-fried onion strings and mushroom-Swiss cheese-French onion spread-sauteed onions. Then there will be two hot sub-style sliders: a pastrami Reuben, a French dip, a fried chicken, and a falafel one with red pepper relish and tzatziki. Then there will be cold sliders: a smoked turkey-cheddar cheese; green chile chicken salad; tuna salad; and a club with roast beef, turkey, bacon, and white American cheese. Other items include miniature latkes, queso, fries, macaroni salad, queso-based mac and cheese, and Caesar salad. Owner Mo Pittle (who is from El Paso and is Jewish) tells Eater that they’re looking into making their own soft serve as well as adding a soda fountain.

Pittle tells Eater that Fareground operating company Richard Sandoval Hospitality reached out to him about opening into the space. “I had a great conversation with [the general manager of Fareground] and felt very comfortable with their vision for the location,” Pittle writes. The address appealed to him because he “love[s] the downtown vibe.” He was also really into the idea of the service style: “Selfishly, I have always thought lunch counters were cool. As someone who used to travel a lot for business, I would often have to eat alone. I always sought out a bar or lunch counter. Just felt better.”

The downtown JewBoy is being joined by a location of the Canadian chain restaurant Freshii, which opened earlier on March 24. The fast-casual menu includes salads, bowls, wraps, burritos soups, cold-pressed juices, smoothies, and other dishes of that nature. The restaurant will be donating one dollar from every order placed through Monday, April 24 to the Central Texas Food Bank.

Originally, Freshii had announced plans to open its first Austin location way back in 2011, which happened in Mueller in 2016, but closed sometime in 2017. There’s a location up in Cedar Park.

The Fareground JewBoy is taking over the space that had housed the Israeli restaurant TLV, and Freshii with Henbit. Both TLV and Henbit closed in March 2023 because parent company Emmer & Rye Hospitality wanted to focus on opening its forthcoming Mediterranean restaurant Ezov in the spring.

As Austin’s first and only true food hall, Fareground opened in 2018, then operated by local restaurant company ELM. Since then, there had been a lot of food stall shutters and openings, and then its long temporary shutter from the beginning of the pandemic into September 2021. That’s when Richard Sandoval Hospitality took over the operations and added some new tenants. The current roster includes Austin Rotisserie, Little Wu (from downtown Austin restaurant Wu Chow, and Taco Pegas (which is from the company’s celebrity chef Richard Sandoval).

Pittle started JewBoy Burgers in 2016 as a food truck and then transformed it into a restaurant in 2020. He opened JewBoy Sub Shop in 2021 and then JewBoy Sliders (the truck) in October 2022.

Both JewBoy Sliders and Freshii’s hours are from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

Fareground