Texas French Bread opens at same site after fire

One of Austin's beloved eateries has officially reopened. Yeah, Texas French Bread. It's a full-service cafe. They offer breakfast, lunch, dinner, alongside it, of course, its notable bread and pastry program. Tierra Newbaum joins us live from there with a look. Tierra, good morning. Good morning. I'm so excited to be at Texas French Bread and a lot of the community really hyped when you guys reopened over the summer after a fire here four years ago. So Murph, kind of walk us through the reopening and maybe even the history of Texas French Bread if somebody's not familiar with the shop. Well, it has been four years since we've been open, so the history would be long, but basically it started when... It was 1981, and my mom was working for the English department at the university, and kind of hated her job, and she was making French bread at home as a hobby, and she got invited to go to this Mardi Gras party where Ron and Peggy Westfield recently opened Jeffrey's over at Clarksville, were, you know, threw a party at their house, and... She took French bread, and they were like, this is great, can you make it for the restaurant? And her first response was no, and then she went back to work and thought about it, and she called them and said, hey, I'd really like to try that. Anyway, one thing led to another, and here we are, it's 40-some years later. But, you know, the thing, I think the thing most people would be familiar with was that we did just go through this fire, and I say just, it was... January of 2022, and we thought that this would be a fairly quick process once we had decided to try to get reopened. Boy, everything takes longer than you think. Anyway, we put one foot in front of another, and one day we were standing here, and it was like, oh, looks pretty good, let's open the doors. And that was July of the summer. Thank you very much. And I think we all realized that it had been a lot longer than we remembered in terms of, well, how do we do this restaurant stuff again? But, um... We've got some reps under our belt at this point, and we're excited to sort of invite you in and try to invite people who may not have ever been here before that fire to come over and get to know us. I couldn't believe that it had been four years since the fire, and we're so, so excited. You guys are open just in time for the holidays. Before we get into these beautiful pastries and, of course, the beverages that you guys have here, Carissa, can you talk about these amazing holiday tins? and holiday treats that you guys have that are available for pre-sale until I think November 1st. Yeah, so we are offering a wide selection of baked goods for your holiday parties and your treats and your get-togethers that you can order on a pre-order basis to pick up here in our retail shop. We're also preparing these beautiful cookie tins that start production. Right around Thanksgiving, so that you can order these ahead and have them ready for your holiday get togethers. And we are also shipping the cookie tins, which is a sweet variety of handmade cookies that ship anywhere in the US. They're so, so yummy too. Okay, walk us through the flavors that are in the tin. Well we have a cranberry. Breakfast of a champion. The butter cookie tin, or the butter cookie, and then our checkerboard. It just gives holiday when you take a bite of those and have some coffee. Delicious. Okay, and then let's talk about the notable pastry program that you guys have here. Sure. You know, I mean, my first experience with doing this, when we opened at 34th and Guadalupe, you know, years ago, I was a college student at UT, and my job was to come over and roll croissant dough at four in the morning. And so... I've been looking at these pastries a long time. I think that... You've got sort of a selection of things that we're doing out here that I think are really beautiful. I feel like we really like this. But one thing that I would definitely point to, this cranberry walnut, it's an orange cranberry walnut bread. We do it every holiday season, and it's fresh cranberries only. Probably. That's kind of a really special product. We run it for six weeks of the year while the fresh cranberries are available. But it's available now. We've got And we've got three different kinds of cinnamon rolls. That's the sugared cinnamon roll that we're doing. It's been super popular. We've got a couple of danishes out there, the blueberry and, what is it, cherry? Cherry. Cherry. Our ham and cheese croissant, which we have... Hard time keeping those in stock on game days. Thank you. The spinach and cheese. It is pretty rough. It all looks amazing. I was told you can't leave without trying that ham and cheese. We happily will. We're grateful you guys are back open. Thank you for sitting down this morning, guys. We'll send it back to you in the studio. We've got a whole morning here. We're going to check out the lunch, the dinner, and we'll keep telling this story. So we'll send it back to you for now. Cheers. Cheers. This has been on my list to try it for a long time. Yeah. This is French bread. We were just dissecting and locked in on everything that's on that table. With a name like Texas French bread, I want to try it all. One of Austin's beloved eateries has officially reopened its doors. Texas French Bread has got a full-service cafe offering breakfast, lunch and dinner alongside its very notable bread and pastry program. Tierra Newbaum joins us live from there with a look at their lineup. Hey Tierra, good morning. Good morning, guys. Yeah, this has just been a staple in the Austin community for several decades and reopened this summer after a fire in 2021, Murph. And we're getting a look at the breakfast and lunch program here. We've got some of the daytime managers joining us, Christina, Chloe, and Jay. You're going to see their faces when you come in during the day and just a special group of people that you have here and a lot on the menu that people really enjoy too. So, Murph, tell us about this. In the front are breakfast tostadas, so it's a couple of eggs, it's ranchero sauce, it's avocados, black beans, that's kind of one of my favorite things to eat here. Also, sent it out there because I wanted to tell people that you can come to eat at Texas French Bread, even if you are gluten-free, we can do a lot of different things without using bread. For those of you that do like gluten, we've got one of our sort of... Oldest, most prominent sandwiches, which is our homemade chicken salad sandwich, super popular. But I wanted to note that we make all of our breads with 100% organic flour. Thank you. One of the reasons that we do this is that it's the only way that we can make sure that flour's not being treated with pesticides and Roundup and that kind of stuff. And we want to make sure that we're not feeding people that. Yeah. Yeah. So the last thing that I was going to point to is one of our most popular items during the daytime, which is the breakfast sandwich. It's fried egg, it's ham from Peaceful Pork, which is Loncito Cartwright's shop, cheese, and a homemade English muffin that we make here in-house. Finally, we've got our baguette, which is our original product, and a good example of one of our artisan breads, which is the amber rye. All looks fantastic. Mouth is watering. It's been a delight to spend the morning with you guys. This is, of course, a little small preview of breakfast, brunch, lunch. What's the brunch program like here? Do people need to make reservation? Can they just show up? We know people in Austin love their brunch. You can just show up, but we're on Resi. You can make a reservation for brunch on Saturday or Sunday. We start at 8 a.m. Yeah, 8 o'clock, runs until 2.30. We also take reservations for dinner service as well, but we're going to talk about that in just a little bit. Yeah, we're excited to see the dinner menu in just a bit. This has been a longtime family business for you, reopened earlier this summer. How's it been going? How does it feel? It's been going great. I think all of us were kind of shocked at just how well attended we've been. Thank you. I had kind of worried that we might reopen and we would really have to sort of find our way and figure out how to sort of redevelop our audience and that kind of thing. Good morning. We'd had a steady business, but it was fairly manageable out in our garden space outside where we had been operating from a food truck the last several years. But the minute we reopened the doors, it was like people found their way back here and there's... It's hopefully not been too long of a line, but we're off and on our way. There's a buzz about Texas French bread around town, and we're excited to be here this morning. You can also grab their holiday treats. We talked about those earlier in the broadcast. They are doing pre-sales on those now, so a great gifting idea or great to have sitting around for the holiday season. And we'll get a look at that French-inspired dinner menu a little bit later on in the broadcast, so we'll check back in in just a bit, guys. We've seen breakfast and lunch. It all looks 10 out of 10. It's getting better and better. Yeah, it is. Thanks, Tiara. Well, one of Austin's beloved eateries has now officially reopened its doors. That's Texas French Bread. They're a full-service cafe. You can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner there, of course, along with their notable bread and pastry program. A lot of that. Tiara joins us live now with a look at more of their lineup. Hey, Tiara. Hey guys, good morning. Yeah, a lot of folks think of Texas French bread as bread pastries, but we're getting a look at the fabulous dinner program here. Nearly two decades in the works, so if people aren't familiar that you guys have a dinner program, they know now, Murph, but this is a pretty special one. Yeah, we think it's pretty good. We started this program in 2008. I was working with my younger brother at that point, and we had both done some work in other restaurants, and we thought, well, you know, we have this space. Why don't we try doing this? This is probably... Especially important at the time because we really needed to find a way to sort of start some additional lines of business. Thank you. We were excited about the idea that this thing might eventually sort of become really an integral part of what we do, but it has grown to become sort of the tip of the spear for us. We think it's something that we do really well. Well, and... In that spirit, I wanted to introduce our chef, Derek Zampicorda. Derek started with us in 2017, we were just trying to count back, and was here all the way through COVID. And then when the fire happened, left for a couple of years and worked at Daidue and then at Bartodi. Thank you very much. With the SD group, and we've been really fortunate to get him back. I mean, look at this beautiful spread that you've prepared for us this morning, Chef. So kind of walk us through these dishes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So French bread, very classic style cooking. That's what drives me towards this restaurant in the first place. I love bistro menus. I love the whole aesthetics of it, the feel of it that you get. And I think it's something that... Austin doesn't have a lot of, and that's why this place is very special. Thank you very much. So with that, a lot of the dishes that I like to prepare are very classic, a lot of classic techniques, a lot of farm-fresh produce. That's what French bread is based on, is very solid quality ingredients. So we've got a steak au poivre, which is classic, steak sauce, green peppercorns, sherry... You've got whiskey, you've got hand-cut fries, a flat iron steak, and then we do a rotating seasonal pasta. We could put many pastas on the menu, but right now we've got a fettuccine with bolognese, a very classic recipe for the bolognese that we do. And then for seasonal produce, we like to kind of highlight certain things on the menu, so we've got right now a warm beet and sweet potato salad. The beets are tossed in a warm onion vinaigrette, the sweet potatoes are marinated in an achiote paste that we roast, and then topped with a whipped chèvre, some nuts and some herbs, and then we do a grilled sourdough. It all looks fantastic. This is just a small preview of that, some low ABV wines, a very beautiful spread of natural wines that you guys have here. We talked about that earlier, Murph, but how often is the menu changing and you guys are constantly just looking at what's in season and what's available? The menu can change depending on what we can source. It can change weekly, it can change daily, it can change monthly. Exactly. Um, how fresh the ingredients we can get really is our highlight. I love that. We like to keep, we like to keep certain staples on, you know, for the guests that can come back and they can tell their friends and they can make sure that when they bring their friends back, they can have something to look forward to. Absolutely. All looks like a delight. All right, Murph, real quick before we go, if somebody's maybe not been in to enjoy the dinner service or to even dine with you guys ever, what's your message to them? First of all, where have you been? Um, the, um... The message is we do take reservations for brunch and for dinner. We do it on Resy is the platform that we use, but you can also just call us. Or you can wander in if you're in the neighborhood. Dinner opens at 5 o'clock. We're every Tuesday through Saturday. Thank you. Most mornings we open at 7 and kitchen opens at 8. So we'd love to see you. Yeah, they'd love to see you. And it is such a staple in our community, has been for several decades. We got to hear a little bit about the history earlier in the broadcast. But a delight to be here and spend the morning with Texas French Bread guys. We'll send it back to you in the studio. Don't forget to place those holiday orders, too. We talked about that at 7:30. If you missed it, check out their website. That might be the biggest tip of the morning. Yeah, get that plan ready. And that's a great place to do it. Tiara, thanks.