Hill Country Restaurant Updates 10/22/26

🆕 Proper Ash Steakhouse finally has a website up for its Belterra-area dining room, and construction on the 160-seat steakhouse starts this month — and now we know who's behind it.

🆕 Briggs Distilling Co. threw open its doors in Driftwood on October 17, and the family-owned whiskey distillery is officially open with live music and a permanent burger truck out front.

🆕 This week's craving is a brewery flight: Vista Brewing in Driftwood, the farm-to-table taproom that's been pouring hyper-local plates since long before "agri-hood" was a word anyone used.

🆕 Proper Ash Steakhouse (Dripping Springs / Belterra Village) — MAJOR UPDATE: the steakhouse headed for the old Garbo's space now has names behind it — co-owners Manny Santillan and Kim Russell, both longtime Dripping Springs locals, with culinary partner and executive chef Robert Garcia (formerly of Ruth's Chris, J-Prime and Bohanan's) leading the kitchen. The concept has grown in scope too: plans now call for service from breakfast and Italian espresso through lunch, dinner and late-night drinks, plus a second-level mezzanine for private dining, a patio and a monthly feature spotlighting a different local producer. Construction is still set for mid-October 2026 through a tentative mid-June 2027 completion, on the same $500,000 remodel of the existing 5,173-square-foot space.

Still in the pipeline: no change this week on The Forager (still a soft "Fall 2026") or The Cat's Meow boba shop on RR 12 (still no opening date, though its November tea party is on the books). No new restaurant filings hit the state or county logs for Dripping Springs, Driftwood, or Wimberley this week.

Quiet week for brand-new doors — nothing crossed into our 60-day window this week that we haven't already told you about. FM Pizza and Un Mundo De Sabor are both still settling into their spots from a couple weeks back, and we'll flag the next new one the second it surfaces.

Gennaro DiMeo already had two restaurants running in Canyon Lake when his partner Dino Taccogna talked him into a third, and in June they opened Gennaro's Ristorante Italiano in the old Hildee's spot on Ranch Road 12 with a from-scratch kitchen and a chef who's cooked alongside Gennaro for 28 years. The menu sticks to what the family knows — hand-tossed Pizza Romana, a full lineup of pastas, and daily seafood specials that run from Scottish salmon to halibut — with touches from Dino's native Puglia worked in around the edges. It's the kind of room where you can get a quick lunch special or settle in for the three-hour Italian dinner the owners keep talking about. Pro tip: closed Mondays, open Tuesday 4–9 and Wednesday–Sunday from 11 — go hungry and split the halibut.

📖 Want the full story on Gennaro's Ristorante Italiano — the backstory, hours, and what to order? Read our complete write-up at LocalEats.News/austin-hillcountry

🆕 Briggs Distilling Co. (Driftwood / Brownson Ln) — MAJOR UPDATE: the family whiskey distillery is officially open after its October 17 grand-opening bash, and the regular hours are now live — Wednesday and Thursday 4 to 10, Friday and Saturday 11 to 10, Sunday 11 to 7. The three house pours are a Straight Rye, a Heritage Reserve Bourbon and a Wheated Bourbon, available as tastings, flights, or mixed into cocktails, and the permanent on-site food truck, A.T. Eatz, handles burgers, wings and fries whenever the distillery's open. It's a drinks destination first — no in-house kitchen — but between the food truck and the weekend music on the back lawn, it's become the valley's newest reason to linger.

Our weekly pick: a local favorite worth the drive.

Quiet weekend for food-and-drink events proper — the valley's calendar is full of haunted hayrides, trick-or-treat trails and yoga-studio ribbon cuttings this week, but the two standing markets are both running as usual, and the Driftwood Fall Festival at Vista Brewing keeps going through November 1 if you need a pumpkin-patch fix.

Nothing we can confirm closed around the valley this week. If you've seen a sign on a door, send it our way.

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✌️ Until next Thursday,

Nolan K.

P.S. Corrections welcome. If I got something wrong, email me at [email protected] — I try to double-check everything, but I'm human.