Badolina Bakery in Rice Village (photo by Kirsten Gilliam)
Seared diver scallops at Annabelle Brasserie (photo by Brian Kennedy)
When a fancy French fête is in order, Ben Berg’s feminine Autry Park newcomer is ready with a sleek bi-level, umbrella-dotted veranda and picturesque views of Buffalo Bayou. The nature theme continues indoors with yards of flowers dangling from the ceilings and French doors streaming with sunlight. If indulging your inner Francophile, order the raclette baguette prepared tableside, and a Frenchie martini.
A stage on the patio at Armadillo Palace
If you want it made in the shade with a side of live music, Goode Co.’s lively landmark is your ticket to hot summer nights. The roomy gravel patio is strewn with metal lawn chairs, pastel settees, and picnic tables all in view of the bandstand, and the Airstream dispenses cold Longnecks during events. Couple the genuine Hill Country music-venue vibe with fine Texana fare, and this palace has a true sense of place.
After 10 years, a Heights classic (and its vegetable garden glowing with string lights) continues to flourish. As far as restaurant patios go, Coltivare is the closest thing to dining in someone’s backyard. GM-sommelier Leonora Varvoutis always has interesting Italian-focused wines to pair with the fresh menu. Think zingy strawberry salad, or lamb steak with spring vegetables.
The Eau Tour entrance and patio
Anticipate loads of charm at Benjy Levit’s still-new brasserie, from its fun menu and modern interior to the intimate, treehouse-style patio hideaway overlooking Rice Village. Arrive early, and you might just have the whole patio to yourself. After an order of raclette dumplings with shaved mushrooms or duck confit, you’ll realize this is much more civilized than sitting on a crowded, loud sidewalk café in France.
The patio at Flora Mexican Kitchen
When you think of dining outdoors, this epic undertaking hovering over Buffalo Bayou’s Lost Lake has all the elements. The glass-wrapped interior dripping with chandeliers sports impressive views. Your destination — the patio — feels like you are floating in a cube inside the woods. But Flora isn’t just a pretty face: Serious fare like pork shank with mole rojo and Gratify ceviche please both hard-core Mexican-food fans and ladies-who-lunch-and-brunch.
Rice Village people-watching, along with buzzy drinks, pastries and modern Israeli fare, keep these adjacent outdoor spaces hopping. Crisp garden furnishings with ornate umbrellas and lush landscaping add to the exotic patio vibe; Hamsa sports roll-up doors to bring the outdoors in. Catch the new brunch, go all out for dinner, or simply share a salatim with creamy labneh, hummus, beet salad and much more.
A toast on Hungry’s upstairs balcony (photo by Becca Wright)
Hungry? Vegans and meat-eaters, you’ve come to the right place. Immensely popular on weekends for its sprawling Rice Village patio and second-floor covered balcony, Hungry’s affordable, massive menu is also a draw. Tuck into a market chopped salad, crispy eggplant tacos, or a slew of burgers. Brunch on egg Benedicts — and the winning smoked-salmon-avocado toast with chipotle cream cheese, guacamole and Persian cucumber dill salad. Here’s to another 45 years!
The Courtyard at the new La Griglia
Maybe it’s the plush banquettes, the shrubs and lemon trees hugging each table, or the patio bar, but this new courtyard with a retractable roof feels a little like you’re sitting on a patio in Tuscany. Don’t miss the generous salads — namely the Caesar — or the must-have classic Snapper La Griglia with prawns, jumbo crab and Barolo sauce. Chef kiss!
Here’s a stunning use of a relatively small space that evokes India. The second-floor terrace has a slick little bar with enchanting dangling lamps and its semi-private cabana-draped daybeds with tables make it feel worlds away. You might be tempted to take a catnap, but then you’d miss the exciting fare like Mithu’s Coriander Shrimp, the golden hour Lodhi Garden cocktail, or an eye-popping dessert.
The gardens at Tiny Boxwood
No question the prettiest perch in town, nursery-landscaper Thompson+ Hanson’s restaurant blooms straight from its lawn. Green thumbs and foodies have been digging the Euro-American menu for 20-plus years, and with three concepts and a recent expansion to Austin, we don’t see this group slowing. Try the spring burrata with prosciutto and melon — and do stop and smell the roses.
Matthew Aucoin
At just 33, Matthew Aucoin is already a sought-after composer, writer and conductor. His Music for New Bodies is an ambitious music and theater piece scored for the unusual combination of five vocal soloists and an 18-instrument ensemble, with texts by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham. Co-presented by DACAMERA and the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and directed by the inimitable Peter Sellars, Music for New Bodies is an oratorio for our troubled time. It’s inspired by what Aucoin describes as Graham’s “acute awareness of our species’ abandonment of our duties both to the planet we live on and to ourselves.” For the premiere, Aucoin, a former MacArthur Fellow, will conduct an instrumental ensemble of Shepherd School of Music students and DACAMERA Young Artists.
“Studying this on your own is like seeing one side of a crystal,” says New York-born, Cuban-American soprano Meryl Dominguez, 31, who will perform alongside Kathryn Lewek, soprano; Rachael Wilson, mezzo-soprano; Brenton Ryan, tenor; and Cory McGee, bass-baritone. “There aren’t really solos in the same way you would think of an aria versus an ensemble,” says Dominguez. “We are all acting as one character in some ways, but the different facets of a personality show up in the different voices and specific lines.” Now in her final year as a HGO Butler Studio artist, Dominguez has always been drawn to music with a “complex emotional life,” and describes her voice as having a kind of “transparence” in terms of emotion. “If I get overwhelmed onstage, you can hear it,” says Dominguez. “I like and am challenged by that aspect of my voice.”
Meryl Dominguez (photo by Jiyang Chen)
Peter Sellars (photo by Ruth Walz)
Tasked to make sense out of all of this transparency and complexity is Sellars, renowned for his irreverent yet reverent staging of opera warhorses, Handel oratorios, and Shakespeare tragedies — and who famously directed the 1987 HGO premiere of John Adams and Alice Goodman’s Nixon in China. “Most of what I do is never anything you can see,” laughs Sellars, whose directorial vision for Music for New Bodies is eminently practical and intensely collaborative. “The story is being told and the imagery is being created by everybody in the ensemble. Each of the groups (the singers, string players, wind players, and percussionists) have their own kind of amazing metabolism working, and you feel each group moving as a unit and as part of a larger picture.”
Throughout Music for New Bodies, Aucoin’s music seems to grow like a forest out of dark soil; the complexity of the composition intensifies and recedes, mirroring the emotional journey of the characters, some human, some not, leading to simple, soaring lines and moments where the voices disappear completely. “When you’re talking about experiences that are on the edge of human consciousness, there are places where words no longer function, and music takes over,” says Sellars when describing these moments of transfiguration. Ocean spirits, toxic yet lifesaving chemicals, and the Earth itself are all given a “voice” by the quintet and instruments.
“If we don’t make new things, music won’t continue to grow and develop,” says Dominguez. It’s a sentiment echoed by Sellars, whose career-long search for new modes of expression speaks to humankind’s potential for change, even when challenges such as the planet’s warming oceans can feel insurmountable.
“The real tradition, is that it has to be new,” says Sellars, laughing again. “And that’s what the arts are here for. To just say let’s move one, let’s imagine, and let’s reimagine.”