An American-based Japanese barbecue restaurant chain will be opening its first Austin location next year. Chubby Cattle will be opening its all-you-can-eat wagyu restaurant inside of the Barton Creek Square Mall at 2901 Capital of Texas Highway sometime in 2025.

Chubby Cattle’s Austin location offers three tiers of all-you-can-eat grill-it-yourself meats, emphasizing wagyu meats. Those cuts include rib-eye, short-rib, and even the decadent-sounding wagyu paired with uni and caviar. Then there are other meats like scallops, pork belly, and lamb chops. And then there are other not-barbecued dishes like sushi, hand rolls, dumplings, soups, seafood, vegetables, and fruits.

The tier options are available at different pricing for members of the restaurant group (for use at any location) and non-members. The membership program comes with NFTs and rewards like free birthday meals, discounts, guest passes, and reservations. There are also time-limits for seated service.

The restaurant chain is known for implementing conveyor belt services and robot servers. rounded out by visual projections. The company sources its wagyu from ranches in California and Oregon through partnerships.

Chubby Cattle’s first location — dedicated to hot pot — opened in Las Vegas in 2014 with co-founders Harby Yang and managing partner David Zhao. There are Chubby Cattles also in Denver, Chicago, Southern California, Philadelphia, and Duluth — some of those are dedicated to hot pot or shabu-shabu rather than Japanese barbecue. There’s a location slated for Houston too.

The Chubby parent company also oversees other restaurants. There’s Las Vegas hot pot restaurant X Pot, Los Angeles Japanese steakhouse Niku X, Los Angeles shabu-shabu restaurant Mikiya, and others.

In recent years, Austin’s been getting a spate of all-you-can-eat pan-Asian restaurants and chain expansions. There’s Gangnam Korean BBQ in April 2023, Soupleaf Hot Pot also in April 2023, K Pot Korean BBQ & Hot Pot in January 2024 (with a second one later this year). and Liuyishou Hot Pot sometime later in 2024.

The Austin Chubby Cattle will be found on the second floor near the Nordstrom wing. Expect indoor dine-in services and daytime into evening hours.

GEORGETOWN, Texas – The State of Texas is looking to implement a new flood plan, one that could cost around $55 billion.

According to the Texas Water Development Board, one in six Texans live or work in areas at risk for flooding.

“We want to put out a state flood plan that does what it is tasked to do and that is again, save lives and save property,” said chairwoman Brooke Paup.

Under the state’s newest flood plan, more than 800,000 residents and 214,000 structures could be spared from serious flooding in the next century.

It’s an issue Georgetown residents like Elizabeth Copley know well.

“It got fairly high,” said Copley. “You could see a lot of water going out in that direction.”

In 2018, she watched the San Gabriel River rise several feet from her backyard.

“We live on the side of a cliff so it didn’t come to where we were scared we’d have to leave our house or evacuate but it did come significantly high and knock a lot of trees down,” said Copley.

This spring, Williamson County notified residents about an additional 6,000 new sites at risk for flooding.

“We are doing new studies in those areas where there were never floodplains or FEMA floodplains previously, so that’s kind of in part some of that major increase.,” said Cindy Engelhardt, with Half Associates, which helped the county put together a new floodplain mapping study called Atlas 14.

“We want to continue raising the awareness and helping people better understand floods such that we save lives and property and all the other things and just be more resilient moving forward.”

According to the Texas Water Development Board, another 6 million residents and 1.6 million structures across the state are at risk for flood damage. However, that $55 billion could fund more than 4600 protective projects.

“One of the greatest successes of this first round of regional and state flood planning is that now we have some level of flood hazard information for the entire state,” said TWDB board member L’oreal Stepney.

Some of the solutions include more nature-based fixes like ditches, storm sewers and retention ponds. About half of the total costs, or around $24 billion, would go towards building a surge protection in Galveston.

The board said this plan would be funded on a federal, state, and local level.