Culture Map Austin
It’ll be a little hard to explain in the group chat: yes, it’s a hot, new restaurant, and yes, it’s at the senior living center. But according to chef Stephan Pyles (whose 12 James Beard Award nominations say he can open a restaurant wherever he wants), it’s just a regular restaurant. Well, maybe a little nicer.
More specifically, this is his answer to the truckstop café he was “raised in.” That was in Big Spring, Texas, out by Midland, and while that location and very niche restaurant genre is a point of pride, Pyles is transcending it, not unlike the common perception of retirement home dining.
“It was the last thing that I wanted to do — it was the last thing my parents wanted me to do — was to get into food,” says Pyles. “So I got a degree in music, and then took a trip to France, and fell in love with food after college. This, in essence, is returning …. This is what my truckstop café would have been like if I weren’t 10, if I had more taste, and if I had money. It’s going to be a real Texas experience.”…