The best guides to a city’s secrets can sometimes be found in books that have nothing to do with travel. In this series, Book It, we invite authors to reveal what they truly love about the cities where their stories are set or the ones they call home.
Elizabeth McCracken has made Austin her home for the past 16 years. Now she’s picking up stakes for Bath, England. (Her partner is English, and she’ll continue to teach from there through spring.) The award-winning novelist, memoirist, and short story and Substack writer has taught fiction writing for more than three decades, including at the University of Texas at Austin and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, informing her latest book, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (Ecco).
As she moves across the pond, the native Bostonian recalls the places that made her a local in her adopted city. “Austin is famous for its live music, but it’s an incredibly literary city,” she tells Vogue, “full of independent bookstores and reading series and The Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas’s incredible archive of nearly everything.”
Hotel: The Hotel San José on South Congress Street is close to The Continental Club, and is also a nice place to grab a drink. (The Continental Club has been around since 1955, and is an amazing place to hear live music. I saw Kathy Valentine of the Go-Gos play a farewell concert there with The Bluebonnets, just before she moved to England: it was electric, unforgettable.)
Restaurant: Justine’s Brasserie is an ideal restaurant, with great French food, a bustling dining room, and lovely outdoor space and a replica of Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein in the ladies’ room. Somehow, I always have fun at Justine’s. The cocktails are exceptional. There’s even a tintype photography studio out back.
For breakfast: When I moved to Austin, South Congress Street was a collection of oddball businesses and very Austin joints; there was even, too briefly, a wax museum. Now it’s dominated by fancy boot and hat shops (as well as the old school Allens Boots). Güero’s Taco Bar (alongside the fabled Continental Club) is one of the last older businesses standing, good any time of the day, but the breakfast tacos are my favorite. Some people find it too touristy because of its location. More queso for me, I say.
For a caffeine fix: Quack’s Bakery in Hyde Park (though they have other locations). Excellent cookies and cakes, too.
To stock up on beauty buys: Hand to God, I buy most of my stuff in the beauty aisle of H-E-B, the legendary and beloved Texan grocery store.
For dessert: Lammes Candies, especially their Longhorns (caramel, pecans, and chocolate). Lammes has been around since 1885 and is one of my favorite candy shops of all time.
Theater: Austin is an extraordinary movie theater town, with the Alamo Drafthouse, the Violet Crown, and the Paramount Theatre ’s summer movie series—but the monarch of them all is the Austin Film Society, director Richard Linklater’s joint, whose new releases and series (classic films you’ve heard of and many you haven’t) have been a profound influence on my work and a joy in my life. You didn’t ask, but I also love Esther’s Follies on Old Sixth Street—a comedy/magic/musical parody show that’s been running for 50 years and is both up-to-the-minute and delightfully old-fashioned.
Best dish: The moules frites at Hopfields, which is one of my favorite restaurants and certainly the one I frequent most often. They’re close to the University of Texas campus, and serve from 11 a.m. to 12 a.m., with a friendly bar up front and a series of cozy backrooms, plus a nice patio. The mussels come in a big glass bowl heaped with fries.
Must shop: Uncommon Objects, a mind-bogglingly vast and beautiful antique store which is also a work of art, crammed full of stuff and arranged by its brilliant owner, Steve Wiman, who is an artist. Among my Uncommon Objects purchases: a bottle of WWI buttons picked out of a French battlefield for my kid; a birdhouse shaped like a castle made out of aluminum siding; any number of busts; a bird’s nest installed in an antique cigar box.
To see art: Truthfully, Uncommon Objects, which has a lot of paintings and sculptures to admire, even if you don’t take any home.
Bookstore: How can I choose one? There are so many great places, but my heart especially belongs to Alienated Majesty (specializing in small presses and poetry, it calls itself “home of the leastsellers”); BookWoman (Texas’s oldest feminist book shop); First Light (exceptionally beautiful, with great coffee); and Livra Books (a terrific used bookstore).
To buy flowers: The Farmer’s Market at Mueller, Sunday mornings.
Must-buy souvenir: Don’t buy expensive cowboy boots thinking you will change your life after years of bootlessness; when you get home you’ll feel foolish. Go instead to Triple Z Threads on South Congress, where they embroider cool designs—among them, Sasquatch and Ruth Bader Ginsburg—on vintage pearl snap shirts.
Tourist trap I love anyway: Can you call a natural occurring phenomenon a tourist trap? If you are there at the right time of year, go see the bats that fly out from underneath the Congress Street Bridge at dusk. Get a taco from Veracruz All Natural at the LINE Hotel to eat while you wait.
Nature escape: My favorite place in Austin is Barton Springs Pool, an enormous spring-fed man-made pool in the middle of the city, where you can swim in concert with fish, turtles, herons, Egyptian geese, and tiny, unseen endangered salamanders. Between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., entry is free, and sunrise is sublime. They are also open till 10 p.m.
For peace and quiet: Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin at the Blanton Museum, a small free-standing chapel on the UT campus.
Best way to get around town: It’s impossible to get around Austin. Traffic is terrible, it is decidedly not a walking city, the electric scooters are a menace, and the Waymos—self-driving rideshares—are spooky (though I know people who love them). I don’t know what else to tell you.
Day trip: San Antonio is one of the unsung big cities of America—it’s the country’s seventh biggest—about an hour and a half south of Austin, with great restaurants and museums. I am especially fond of the San Antonio Museum of Art, housed in the former Lone Star Brewery.
Best view: Up the steps at Mount Bonnell, with views over Lake Austin.
Architectural gem: The Elisabet Ney Museum is closed for renovations until the summer of 2026, but it’s one of my favorite places in all of Austin, the former home and studio of a German sculptor and eccentric. It looks like a castle—it even has a tower—and you can view Ney’s work (as well as temporary exhibits of other artists) and commune with her brilliant and idiosyncratic spirit.
Best time to visit, weather-wise: In January and February, when it’s generally sunny and in the 70s.
Cheap date: Chicken Shit Bingo at Ginny’s Little Longhorn, Sunday afternoons (including Easter). Live music, a live chicken puttering around a bingo board, and a widely varied crowd. My cousin Kathy won $240.
Worth-it splurge: Fonda San Miguel, which specializes in interior Mexican cuisine, is the most beautiful restaurant in Austin, with food to match.
Best place for people-watching: The Broken Spoke, a legendary old-fashioned dance hall in South Austin.
Secret spot only locals know: Turtle Pond, behind the tower on the UT campus, was built in 1939 as part of the biology department, and is home to 100 turtles. They are excellent creatures and neighbors.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of A Long Game Notes on Writing Fiction, out now.