Austin, TX
Chef Mashama Bailey Is Closing Her Two Austin Restaurants
Co-founders and business partners chef Mashama Bailey and Johno Morsiano are going to be closing their only Texas restaurants this summer in downtown Austin. Southern restaurant Diner Bar and casual cafe the Grey Market will have their last days inside the Thompson Austin hotel at 500 San Jacinto Boulevard on Sunday, July 14.
Diner Bar and Grey Market are closing because their host site’s parent company Hyatt Hotels is turning its restaurants into in-house operations, according to Bobby Hernandez, the general manager Diner and Grey. Or, as Hernandez writes in email: “The Thompson Hotel’s ownership is continuing to internalize all [food & beverage] operations,” a process that started earlier this year. The hotel’s revenue and reservations manager, Melina Indrasena, confirmed the last day of service.
The Thompson Austin’s switch to in-house restaurants tracks with what happened with the the downtown hotel’s other restaurant/bar, Wax Myrtle’s. It had been run by Chicago-based restaurant group Land and Sea Dept when the hotel opened in February 2022. However, the rooftop spot closed at the end of 2023, and was replaced by a new Mexican restaurant, Arriba Abajo, in March 2024.
Bailey and Morsiano opened their first-ever Texas restaurants in 2022, starting with Grey Market that March, and followed by Diner Bar that April. The restaurants, much like their other one — the original Grey in Savannah, which they opened in 2014 — are rooted in Southern and East Coast port city-style cuisines. Bailey won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2019 for the Georgia-based restaurant, and then the Outstanding Chef award in 2022.
Hernandez writes that the Grey team is focusing on their already-announced restaurant in Paris, which is aiming to open in late 2024 or early 2025.
This impending Diner Bar/Grey Market shutter is similar to another out-of-town chef’s Austin hotel shutter this year. San Antonio chef Steve McHugh had opened his first two local restaurants, Luminaire and Las Bis, inside of the Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue Austin in downtown in February 2023. Just less than a year later, the hotel and rooftop bar suddenly closed on January 1, 2024. The hotel’s statement cited that the hotel and the restaurant group “decided to part ways.”
AUSTIN (KXAN) – Trevor Goosby is a projected first-round pick in the upcoming 2027 NFL Draft. The Texas offensive lineman anchors the group up front for one of the best teams in the country and was named a preseason All-American by Walter Camp.
But his football career felt in jeopardy when he was in high school.
“That was kind of my biggest question,” said Goosby. “I was really nervous because would I be the same football player coming back?”
Goosby was born with a congenital heart defect and had open-heart surgery when he was just 16 years old. He wasn’t sure how this would change his everyday life, including his football career.
“Definitely a lot of nerves just because you’re getting your ribs cracked open essentially and getting your heart worked on…It was a scary moment. I remember driving up to the hospital super nervous.”
Goosby was able to recover and become a great football player. He said not only has he become a person in learning to fight through adversity, but it helped him as a player as well with improved endurance.
Now, the star Longhorn is giving back as much as possible.
Goosby hosted a camp in Austin to benefit the Children’s Heart Foundation. The organization works to fund research on congenital heart defects.
The offensive tackle is matching all donations up to $20,000 made to the Children’s Heart Foundation through the event and campaign.
“It means a lot to me just because of the heart condition I did have back when I was 16. That just kind of changed my life. I just want to bring awareness to that.”
The camp was at Hyde Park High School in Northwest Austin. Goosby spoke about what he hopes the young campers took away from the event.
“I think it’s just more than football. Football is a big part of what I do but it’s not who I am…I just want to show all these kids that I’m just another great guy and just someone they can look up to.”
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas is getting its first major new national stock exchange in decades, and finance experts say it could create new opportunities for Austin’s tech companies and startups looking to grow.
The Texas Stock Exchange is launching this week in Dallas, with live trading expected to begin as early as Friday. The exchange began operations Monday, and it says all publicly traded stocks should be available on the platform by the end of the month. Thousands of publicly traded stocks are expected to be available by then.
Ray Perryman, President and CEO of the Perryman Group, said the launch signals Texas’ growing influence in the financial sector.
“It really lets the world know that Texas is indeed a major player in this industry,” Perryman said.
Gov. Greg Abbott called the exchange another sign of Texas’ expanding economic reach, saying, “This is another step that expands the financial might of Texas in the United States, and cements our economic power on the global stage.”
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Perryman said the exchange could provide another path for companies to go public and could help attract more growing companies to Austin and the rest of the state. He said the added access to capital could have ripple effects across the economy.
“It increases opportunities for firms in the area to expand, have access to capital, to be more profitable. That means they hire more people. That means they pay more taxes. That means they buy more things in their supply chains,” Perryman said.
Texas ranks second in the U.S. for Fortune 500 headquarters, behind California and ahead of New York. With the Texas Stock Exchange set to launch, experts say Austin’s startup community could see even more growth.
Perryman said Austin-area tech firms could benefit from having an in-state exchange option.
“They’ll now have a vehicle here in Texas that will be more efficient and less expensive to register on than the traditional exchanges,” Perryman said.
Perryman said the exchange’s success will depend on how many companies choose to list on it, how much investment it attracts, and how many additional companies decide to move to Texas.
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