Acclaimed San Antonio chef Steve McHugh opened his first restaurant in Austin this week. A new Texan restaurant, Luminaire, and a new bar, Las Bis, opened on February 1 at the Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue in downtown Austin, at 721 Congress Avenue He Austin Hotel.
McHugh’s general culinary ethos demonstrates the use of authentic Texas ingredients and high meat content. This is the approach taken by acclaimed San Antonio restaurant Cured and San Antonio hotel restaurant Landrace. Luminaire and Las Hebis are no exception.
In Austin, this means lots of thoughtfully cooked Texas meat (yes, lots of pork) and vegetables. To set this two of his spots apart from San Antonio, the all-day menu adds a Spanish Via Spain variation. “It’s definitely not hardened,” he tells Eater. “We didn’t want to bring in a lot of San Antonio ideas.”
To develop Austin’s menu, McHugh and the team looked at Cured’s food history, what they did well and what they explored because they didn’t fit in, or didn’t have the time or space for a restaurant in San Antonio. I checked the areas that I wanted to do but couldn’t. This is how they decided to veer into Luminaire’s Spanish route. says. They took Cured’s bresaola — Italian cured beef that has been refrigerator-cured and then air-dried — Applied techniques typically used for: cecina — the Spanish version of bresaola — by smoking it.
Another way McHugh makes Luminaire stand out is with Delgada chops. Delgada chops are much thinner steaks compared to large, thick chunks of steak, and “can be grilled on the griddle very quickly,” he explains.
This idea was born because of the pandemic. He tells how Cured regularly purchased pigs from ranchers. This stopped during the pandemic, but ranchers still needed to do something with their product, so they started making thin meat chops for sale. Instead of pork chops, here are some small thin pork chops that won’t break the bank and at the same time you get really good product and meat and we can still support the farmers ” he says.
Another dish McHugh is excited about is empanadas. Cured builds Boudin 1, but Austin’s restaurant expands further. I have chorizo and potatoes. Chicken, figs, diazabal cheese. Roasted goat cheese and red pepper.
The restaurant space is located on the ground floor of the hotel. McHugh describes it as “a postal size sample of a piece of real estate.” [that] Very narrow” — this made the design difficult. There’s a pork display built by the same company that worked on Cured. With about 60 to 65 seats, it’s “small, tight and noisy,” he says. Restaurant seating can also be extended to his second floor if desired.
And on the 8th floor, Las Bis is a bar with a lovely patio overlooking downtown Austin. The space is a bar at first, but McHugh didn’t want the food to be an afterthought. He and his wife and business partner Silvia traveled to Barcelona many years ago and dined at his tapas restaurant. Texture & Texture, and fell in love with Conserva. Since then, “the idea was always to create a bar or restaurant out of cans,” he says. Las Bi wanted to create a dish that was easy to prepare and serve, and it worked. This means plated tin options from Jose Gourmet, Fishwife, Conservas de Cambados and more.
Opening a restaurant in Austin wasn’t always in McHugh’s long-term plans. “I’m the type to see what happens,” he says. “This was an interesting opportunity for us.” He was approached by a headhunter looking for a chef to run the hotel’s restaurant. McHugh is already familiar with the Hyatt brand because he belongs to the Thompson San Antonio company. McWhinney Group, owner of Hyatt Centric Congress Avenue Austin, “was looking for something a little different and a little unfamiliar” for Austin. What appealed to him about the project was that the company did not sell restaurants. He signed the deal at the beginning of the pandemic.
McHugh also liked that the hotel was in downtown Austin, next to the State Theater and the Paramount Theater. The name of the main restaurant was chosen by Jet Butler of FODA Studios, who has branded many of McHugh’s restaurants, to represent the person who shines the spotlight on stage. “We want to make people remember. [they’re] Heading to the show. I wanted to honor not only that relationship, but theater in general,” he says. In turn, McHugh hopes the spot will become a place to buy food and drinks before and after the show.
The remaining members of the Luminaire/Las Bi team include Operations Director Robert Rodriguez (Cured’s Opening General Manager). Executive Chef Greg Driver, an Austin-based chef who has worked at various hotels and clubs around the city, including Driskill, Radisson, Canopy by Hilton Austin Downtown, and Westwood Country Club. Executive Chef Emilion Baez (one of McHugh’s chefs during his tenure as Executive Chef at Luke in San Antonio, who also worked at Cured, Landrace and Esquire Tavern); Sous Chef Ben Avada (Cured’s alum) and Ashley Minor Sick (who worked with Driver).
The lighting fixtures are open daily from 6:30 AM to 11 PM. Las Bis is open Monday through Thursday from 4 PM to midnight, Friday and Saturday from 11 AM to midnight, and Sunday from noon to midnight.