Austin Restaurant Weeks Starts Tomorrow: What $50 Buys at L'Oca d'Oro

Austin Restaurant Weeks starts tomorrow, August 28, and runs through September 13 — a two-week stretch where roughly 100 restaurants across Austin cut their menus down to a fixed $25, $50, or $75 price, with a slice of every check going to the Central Texas Food Bank. According to ATX Things' review of the event's own site and a sample of its 2026 restaurant pages, the deal is real, the menus are already posted, and reservations for the opening weekend are moving fast.

A storm rolled through Austin this afternoon and the forecast still has Friday topping out near 100°F — which makes a reserved table and air conditioning a genuinely good use of a Friday night, whether or not you'd normally spring for a tasting menu.

What Austin Restaurant Weeks actually is

The event, now run by the Central Texas Food Bank since its 2018 launch, works like this: a restaurant picks one of three prix fixe tiers — a $25 lunch or brunch (two to three courses), a $50 dinner (three to four courses), or a $75 dinner (also three to four courses, at pricier kitchens) — and posts a fixed menu that any guest can order, reservation or walk-in, for the full two weeks. Some spots add a cocktail, beer, or wine pairing on top. The full, current restaurant list lives on the event's own site.

Money moves with every order: $4 of each $25 meal, $7 of each $50 meal, and $10 of each $75 meal goes straight to the Central Texas Food Bank, which the event's own site says serves close to 93,000 people a week across a 21-county service area. A Tito's Handmade Vodka cocktail kicks in another $2; a glass of wine or beer, $1. The event's organizers say Restaurant Weeks has generated nearly 2.9 million meals for the food bank since it started.

What $50 actually buys: L'Oca d'Oro's real menu

Take L'Oca d'Oro, the Italian spot on Simond Avenue near Mueller. Its regular prix fixe menu runs closer to $68; for the length of Restaurant Weeks it drops to a flat $50 for three courses, diner's choice at each:

• First course: fresh mozzarella with melon molasses and delicata squash, a melon-and-cucumber salad with shiso, or wagyu-and-heritage-pork meatballs in tomato jam
• Second course: fusilli with late-summer tomatoes and house sausage, or bucatini Nerano with squash and spiced pine nuts
• Third course: tiramisu with White Sonoran sponge and espresso, or rice pudding with a seasonal compote

4.4★ from 953 Google reviews, as of today. One recent reviewer described a Tuesday visit: "We went on a Tuesday night to celebrate a friend's birthday and did the pay-what-you-will deal. What a bargain. We got a bunch of plates and shared them all. The food was good. Tiramisu was delicious." That review describes a different weeknight promotion the restaurant also runs — worth knowing the Restaurant Weeks menu is a separate, fixed $50 deal, not the pay-what-you-will night.

The $25 and $75 versions, and where else to look

Not every kitchen is doing the $50 tier. Austin Daily Press on East MLK, in the Upper Boggy Creek area, is running its Restaurant Weeks menu at $25, available all day rather than just at lunch: truffle-parm jalapeño hushpuppies with truffle aioli, a choice of a balsamic bacon chicken torta or a balsamic mushroom torta, and a cucumber-lime-basil agua fresca.

Over on East 11th Street, Old Thousand is doing the $50 dinner tier with a genuinely fun four-course Chinese-American menu — veggie spring rolls or spicy chicken chili wontons, wok-fried green beans or Kung Pao Brussels sprouts, smoked lo mein or veggie fried rice, and coconut panna cotta or Chinese five-spice donut holes for dessert.

At the higher end, downtown's BOA Steakhouse is participating too, donating half of every dessert sold to the food bank on top of its regular Restaurant Weeks pricing — though its own event page hadn't posted a full fixed menu as of this week, so call ahead to confirm what's on it before you book.

Beyond those three, the full 2026 list runs close to 100 restaurants and bars citywide, filterable by brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert, and drinks on the event's own site. A few more recognizable names on this year's roster: Uchiba, Bambino, Carpenters Hall, Blue Owl Brewing, Jupiter Supper Club, District Kitchen, Skipjack Oyster, and French Quarter Grille. Curious about a spot's actual kitchen record before you book? Check Austin's restaurant health report or the full best restaurants in Austin guide.

What locals should know

• It runs August 28 – September 13 — a full two weeks, not one.
• Walk-ins are allowed everywhere, but several restaurants (L'Oca d'Oro among them) explicitly recommend a reservation, especially opening weekend.
• Not every restaurant has posted a full public menu yet — BOA Steakhouse's Restaurant Weeks page was still menu-light as of this week. Check the specific restaurant's page the day you plan to go.
• The $25 tier isn't always lunch-only — Austin Daily Press runs its $25 menu all day.
• Every dollar has a fixed donation attached — $4, $7, or $10 per meal depending on tier, plus $1–$2 per drink, all going to the Central Texas Food Bank.

Is it worth booking?

FAQ

When is Austin Restaurant Weeks 2026? August 28 through September 13 — a two-week run, not a single weekend.

Do I need a reservation? No — every participating restaurant accepts walk-ins for the Restaurant Weeks menu — but several restaurants recommend booking ahead, and opening weekend is likely to be the busiest stretch.

How much of my bill actually goes to charity? $4 per $25 meal, $7 per $50 meal, and $10 per $75 meal goes to the Central Texas Food Bank, plus $1–$2 per qualifying drink.

Can I get the Restaurant Weeks price without ordering the full prix fixe? No — the discount applies to the fixed multi-course menu each restaurant posts, not to à la carte ordering from the regular menu.

Where do I find the full restaurant list? The event's own site lists all participating restaurants, filterable by neighborhood-adjacent category (brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert, drinks) — check there before you commit to a plan, since menus and availability can shift restaurant by restaurant.

Looking for more this week? See what else is happening on our things to do in Austin hub.