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🔝 TOP 3 IN 10 SECONDS
⭐ Texas Beef Traders (Lakeway) is this week's Featured Spot — a ranch-direct butcher shop and wine bar in Lakeway Town Center that seats 34 for a chef's dinner Thursday through Sunday.
🆕 A state liquor filing for a "Neighbor's Cafe" — full bar plus food — lists the Bee Creek Road suite in Spicewood where Winston's pours coffee and wood-fired pizza. Rebrand, new owners, or cocktails for the same shop? Nobody's said yet.
😋 This week's craving is barbecue: Opie's in Spicewood, where you pick your meat straight off the pit and the sweet-and-spicy baby backs are the reason people drive out 71.
🏗️ COMING SOON & NEW FILINGS
🆕 "Neighbor's Cafe" (Spicewood / Bee Creek Road) — A new state alcohol filing, submitted September 10 by ALM Restaurant Group, asks for a mixed-beverage permit — the full-bar license — plus a food-and-beverage certificate for Suite 205 at 4900 Bee Creek Road. That's the suite Winston's has run as a coffee-provisions-and-pizza shop since 2023. Whether it's a rebrand, a change of hands, or cocktails coming to the same counter, nothing has been announced.
⏰ ETA: TBD (permit pending)
📍 Address: 4900 Bee Creek Rd, Ste 205, Spicewood, TX 78669
📞 Phone: TBD
🆕 Cypress Ranch (Spicewood / Hwy 71 W) — Two state filings add up to a $1.1 million build on the Highway 71 tract next to the Oribellos food-court building: a 6,900-square-foot convenience store and a 7,200-square-foot shell building "for future tenant lease spaces," both by the same San Antonio owner, with construction starting in October and November and running about a year. No restaurant is named — but a new shell next door to a food court is where the next Spicewood kitchen would land.
⏰ ETA: Construction Oct 2026 – late 2027
📍 Address: 21605–21609 W State Hwy 71, Spicewood, TX 78669
📞 Phone: TBD
Still in the pipeline: Cousin Louie's still has no date or sign for the old League Kitchen & Tavern space in Lakeway, and the Oz. Tap House promised for the former Rocco's on Bee Cave Road has gone quiet — its website lists only the RR 2222 original. We'll flag the next new one the second it surfaces.
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✅ NOW OPEN (LAST 60 DAYS)
Quiet week for brand-new doors — no new restaurant crossed into our 60-day window in Lakeway, Bee Cave, or Spicewood.
⭐ FEATURED SPOT
Texas Beef Traders — Lakeway
Texas Beef Traders opened in March 2021 in Lakeway Town Center as a ranch-direct meat shop and has grown into something you don't see much around the lake: a real butcher case up front, a wine shop in the middle, and a 34-seat dinner four nights a week out of the kitchen in back. Darin Williams, out of two decades in Washington wine country, runs it with chef Thomas Ward, and the beef comes in weekly from two ranches within a hundred miles, butchered in Mason. Pro tip: the shop is open Tuesday–Saturday 11 to 8 and Sunday noon to 8; dinner is Thursday through Sunday 5:30 to 8:30 and the seats go fast, so book by calling or texting 737-308-0561. The dinner menu changes, but a sample is at https://texasbeeftraders.com/sample-dinner-menu.
📍 Address: 2127 Lohmans Crossing Rd, Ste 310, Lakeway, TX 78734
🌐 Website: texasbeeftraders.com
📞 Phone: 737-308-0561
📖 Want the full story on Texas Beef Traders? Read our complete write-up — the backstory, the menu, and what to order — at LocalEats.News/austin-laketravis.
🍷 DRINKS WATCH — NEW ON THE WINE & BEER TRAIL
Quiet week on the wine and beer trail — no new winery, brewery, distillery, or tasting-room filing surfaced for Lakeway, Bee Cave, or Spicewood. One thing we're watching: Highway 71 Brewing's full-bar permit has dropped out of the state's pending queue, which usually means it went through. We'll tell you when the first cocktail pours. Meanwhile Spicewood's cluster is open and pouring — Stone House, Spicewood Vineyards, 5 Soul Wine Co., Iron Wolf (Fridays and Saturdays), and Bella Loma.
😋 THIS WEEK'S CRAVING — BBQ / SMOKEHOUSE
Opie's Barbecue (Spicewood) — Todd and Kristin Ashmore opened Opie's on Highway 71 in 1999, and the routine hasn't changed: walk up to the open pit, point at what you want, and pay at the counter. Everything cooks over mesquite on a rotisserie pit fed logs overnight by a homemade contraption named Woody, and the sweet-and-spicy baby back ribs are what put Opie's on Texas Monthly's Top 50. Get the brisket and the jalapeño-cheddar sausage too, then the tater-tot casserole and the spicy corn, and cobbler for the road. Open Monday–Thursday 11 to 4, Friday–Saturday 11 to 7, Sunday 11 to 5, or until they sell out — go early.
📍 Address: 9504 E State Hwy 71, Spicewood, TX 78669
🌐 Website: opiesbarbecue.com
📞 Phone: 830-693-8660
📅 AROUND THE LAKE — THIS WEEK
Saturday is Taste Lake Travis, the Chamber's tasting festival, noon to 4 at The Meadow at Emerald Point (5973 Hiline Rd) — tastings, drinks, and shopping all covered by the ticket.
On the calendar: Oktoberfest at the Hill Country Galleria is Saturday, Oct. 17, 2 to 6.
Sunday, the Bee Cave Farmers Market is at the Galleria's central plaza, 10 to 2, as always.
❌ RECENTLY CLOSED
The Waypoint food-truck park in Hudson Bend has closed. We'll always flag real closings here first.
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✌️ Until next Friday,
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.