Austin’s Important Prix Fixe Restaurant Adds a New Dining Option

Lenoir, the essential Austin prix fixe restaurant with a focus on hot climate food, is switching things up by adding an a la carte menu. The 1807 South 1st Street restaurant will begin serving this new menu on Tuesday, March 5.

To prep for the new menu, the Bouldin Creek restaurant will be closed from Friday, March 1 through Sunday, March 3. Owners chef Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher decided to add the new menu “because we know people enjoy options, as do we,” as they told Eater.

The a la carte menu will feature the same focus on hot climate food with local sourcing as the restaurant usually does. That menu will be available only within the restaurant as well as the wine garden.

Lenoir’s typical prix fixe menu will remain available inside of the restaurant, though it will expand with four courses once the a la carte option is added. Courses for the prix fixe menu are chosen from four categories split by sourcing (field, sea, land), and then dessert (dream).

Lenoir owners chef Todd Duplechan and Jessica Maher are keeping busy this year. They’re also consulting on the dining and drinking establishments of the forthcoming East Austin hotel Arrive. That includes a Portuguese-Goan restaurant, Vixen’s Wedding, and a casual bar with food, Lefty’s Brick Bar (named because Duplechan is left-handed).

Duplechan and Maher opened Lenoir back in 2012, with the wine garden later that year. They expanded with a next-door cookbook and cooking supply shop, Metier, in 2014, but shuttered that space in 2017. It was converted into an event and private dining space for the restaurant. They added the wine garden food truck in 2015, offering casual bites to those drinking outside.

This article has been updated to reflect that Lenoir’s prix fixe menu will expand from three courses to four.

• All Coverage of Lenoir [EATX]