Shuttered Austin Vegan Restaurant Is Returning in Food Truck Form

Shuttered longtime vegan restaurant Counter Culture is coming back as a food truck this spring. And actually, owner Sue Davis started the restaurant as a food truck in 2009, making this current iteration apt. She opened the physical restaurant in 2012 on East Cesar Chavez, and closed it ten years later, declining to renew the lease because she wasn’t sure how viable the business was. She had been looking to relocate the restaurant into a new space more north but that didn’t work out either. The new food truck will be parked near the University of Texas at Austin campus. The trailer’s decked out in the restaurant’s signature bright blue color.

Austin cocktail bar honorees

Tales of the Cocktail Foundation announced its regional honorees for its Spirited Awards of 2023. Austin bars include Drink.Well, Nickel City, and the Roosevelt Room in both the Best U.S. Bar Teams and Best U.S. CocktaiL Bar categories for the central region; Half Step also in the same team category; and In Plain Sight in the Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar in the central region. The winners will be awarded during the Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans in late July.

UT Austin burnt orange cookies

Austin bakery Cookie Rich is offering a burnt orange cookie sandwich in honor of the University of Texas at Austin’s upcoming graduation ceremony on Saturday, May 6. The red velvet flavor-ed cookie is in the college’s signature color, plus there’s salted caramel.

Tracking Austin events

Clarksville bakery Swedish Hill is hosting an event with cookbook author and baker Natasha Pickowicz for her recent bake book More Than Cake. The event takes place on Sunday, April 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. Tickets are $55.20, which includes tastings of sweets, attendance of the Q&A and book signing, and a cocktail.