There is a restaurant in Austin, Texas named after a street in Austin, Texas, and the street is called Elizabeth Street.
Elizabeth Street Café sits on the corner of South First and Elizabeth, in a converted bungalow in Bouldin Creek. It has been there since the end of 2011. It is a French-Vietnamese café and bakery, it has a bubblegum pink front door, and you order the food by number.
Where it is, and what it is not
1501 South First Street, Austin, Texas 78704.
You will see it filed under South Congress by people writing from a distance. It is not on South Congress. It is in Bouldin Creek, South Austin, which is the neighbourhood immediately west, and the difference matters if you are walking.
The building was a house. Before Elizabeth Street Café it held Bouldin Creek Cafe, which moved a few blocks south.
Who made it
It opened in late December 2011, from Larry McGuire and Tom Moorman, the pair behind Lamberts and Perla’s. Their company was McGuire Moorman Hospitality then. It became MML Hospitality in 2021 when the hotelier Liz Lambert joined as a partner, which is why you now see the restaurant described as an MML place.
McGuire has been straightforward about where the idea came from. Asked why Vietnamese, he said he had always liked it, ever since his mother started taking him to Tam Deli years before.
On the look, he described the brief as giving it a French café feel while integrating aspects of colonial Hanoi.
The room
No celebrity design firm did this. It was done in-house, by Margaret Vera and Joe Holm, with Jon Williams building it, branding by Foda Studio and drawings by the local architect Jamie Chioco.
One correction, because it gets written wrong constantly. The building is not pink. The façade is cool grey. The shutters and the tall windows are turquoise. The front door is bubblegum pink, and there is a neon sign shaped like a puzzle piece. Pink door, grey building.
Inside:
- Black and white chequered marble, with oak floors, and a Carrara marble counter
- Bright turquoise Thonet chairs, antique bentwood, French bistro seating
- Faux-crocodile booths and barstools, teal banquettes, a cobalt blue bar
- Floral teahouse wallpaper, birdcages, reclaimed French light fittings, Vietnamese and local artwork
- Coffee counter on the left, open kitchen ahead, dining to the right
- Two patios: one at the front with blue stools, one round the corner with table service
A writer visiting in 2023 noted that it looked very much the same as it had a decade earlier, and called it a space that was Instagram-worthy back when Instagram barely existed. That is the correct compliment for it.
There is a private room called the Croissant Room, which takes about forty people and is named after what it originally was: the bakery’s production kitchen.
Ordering by number
This is the detail worth travelling for. Every dish has a number and you order by it, and the numbering has barely moved in fifteen years.
A review from January 2012 cites number 31C, pork belly, meatballs and soft boiled egg phở, and number 40, grilled flank steak bun bowl. Both are still 31C and 40 on the menu today. A restaurant that has kept its own numbering stable for fifteen years is telling you something about how much it intends to change.
How the blocks run: 10A to 10E are the rice paper rolls, 11 to 19 the appetisers, 20 to 27 the bánh mì, 30 to 34 the phở, 40 to 48 the bún bowls, 50 to 60 the specialities, and 61 upwards is brunch.
What to eat
The bánh mì are on baguettes baked in the building, which is the whole argument for a French-Vietnamese place having a real boulangerie attached. Number 23 is fried egg, crispy pork belly, avocado and mint. Number 26 is makrut lime fried chicken.
From the appetisers, number 16 is the green mango and cucumber salad, which the Austin Chronicle called shockingly delicious when it reviewed the place in March 2012. Number 18 is broiled escargots, which arrive in Thai basil curry butter and are the single clearest expression of what this restaurant is doing.
The Boulangerie counter runs butter croissants, ham and gruyère, almond, chocolate, kouign-amann, macarons, Nutella éclairs, opera cake, and beignets with house jam.
The wine list is entirely French. Crémant, Muscadet, Chablis, Fleurie, Côtes-du-Rhône, Médoc. An all-French list against a Vietnamese menu sounds like a gimmick and is actually the most coherent thing on the table.
Cocktails include the Da Nang margarita and a hibiscus paloma, and there are shrubs if you want something without alcohol that is not a soft drink.
What it costs
From the current menu: appetisers run from about 12 to 24 dollars, bánh mì 12 to 18, phở 17 to 25, bún bowls 18 to 27, specialities 20 to 30. Pastries are 3.50 to 11. Wine by the glass is 15 to 19 and cocktails 13 to 18.
Two courses and a drink at lunch lands somewhere around 35 to 50 a head. Dinner with cocktails and wine goes comfortably past 70.
For scale, a reviewer in 2012 recorded 108 dollars for four people before tip. The prices have moved the way Austin has moved.
The case against, because there is one
It would be dishonest to write this up without it.
The Infatuation rates Elizabeth Street Café 5.3 out of 10, under the headline that it is all looks and no show. The review praises the bánh mì and the green mango salad and then goes after the phở broth as underseasoned, the bún noodles on texture, and the bánh cuốn as gummy, with macaron quality varying across visits.
That is the standing knock: a beautiful room charging restaurant prices for café food. The 2012 reviews were raves and the Chronicle itself noted at the time that the prices were roughly double what a strip-mall Vietnamese place would charge.
Both things are true. Go for the room, the bakery and the bánh mì, and go in with your eyes open about the phở.
Awards, accurately
It appeared on Bon Appétit’s list of fifty nominees for best new restaurant in America in 2012, one of seven Texas restaurants that year. That is a nomination, not a win, and it gets upgraded in a lot of write-ups.
There is a cookbook, published by Phaidon on 25 October 2017, by Tom Moorman, Larry McGuire and Julia Turshen.
There is no James Beard award. Several write-ups imply otherwise.
Practical
Lunch and dinner run Monday to Friday from 11am to 10pm, with weekends opening later in the afternoon. Weekend brunch is 8am to 2:30pm. Happy hour is Monday to Friday, 3 to 5pm, with half-price appetisers and three dollars off cocktails.
Reservations go through the restaurant’s own website rather than OpenTable, and walk-ins are taken at the counter and on the patio. Hours shift, so check before a long drive.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it called Elizabeth Street Café?
Because it stands on the corner of Elizabeth Street in Austin. The restaurant takes its name from the street it is on, which is a small local one and not any of the better-known Elizabeth Streets in New York or Australia.
Is Elizabeth Street Café still open?
Yes. Its menus were last updated in October 2026 and online ordering is running.
What kind of food is Elizabeth Street Café?
French-Vietnamese. Phở, bánh mì on house-baked baguettes, bún bowls and rice paper rolls, alongside a full French bakery counter.
Is there more than one Elizabeth Street Café?
Two. The Austin original and a second in New Orleans, at 1507 Magazine Street inside Hotel Saint Vincent, opened in 2021 and run by the same company.
A last thought
A restaurant named after the street it stands on is making a small promise: that it belongs where it is and is not going anywhere.
Fifteen years, the same numbering, the same turquoise chairs, the same pink door. Whatever you make of the phở, it kept that promise.
