A newcomer any Austinite should welcome: Savannah chef Mashama Bailey's Diner Bar

Many Austinites view outsiders with enough skepticism to fill Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Maybe you’ve seen the “Don’t Move Here” bumper stickers or drunk from the font of memes side-eyeing Californian carpetbaggers.

While much of the pearl-snap-clutching borders on performative disdain, there exists an undeniable indifference to many imports. That dynamic extends to the restaurant world.

You could count on one hand the number of out-of-town celebrity chefs who have landed on Austin’s shores to much applause, or even wide acknowledgment, and still have a finger or three to spare.

Mashama Bailey might be just the right person to challenge the old-line thinking. The New York-born (and mostly raised) chef won a James Beard Award for best chef in the Southeast in 2019 for her work at The Grey, the Savannah, Georgia, restaurant she and partner John O. Morisano opened in a renovated Greyhound station in 2015. Weeks after opening her upscale Diner Bar and more casual Grey Market at the Thompson Austin hotel this spring (a move two years in the making), Bailey took home the Beard crown of most outstanding chef in the country.

I can’t remember another chef arriving in Austin bestowed with such laurels. But, whether due to the restaurant’s location inside a hotel in a downtown district frequented more by tourists than locals these days or Austinites’ casual indifference to outsiders, the news of Bailey’s arrival didn’t seem to arouse Austin’s palate, beyond hardcore dining fans and lovers of Netflix's "Chef's Table."

That says more about the city than the chef. And the city shouldn’t sleep. Despite our casual self-satisfaction, it’s clear that Austin needs as many exciting and diverse voices as possible. And Austin lacks the kind of high technique port city food that has made Bailey a star.

With a schedule that likely demands much tending to said shine, Bailey shouldn’t be expected to serve as a daily presence at her Austin outpost, though she and Morisano say they’re deeply committed to their first restaurant outside of Georgia. The chef, who spent childhood summers with her grandparents in Georgia, wisely hired Austin chef Kristine Kittrell as her proxy. Kittrell, a 25-year veteran of the local scene, served as opening co-chef at El Chile. Working throughout the city over the years, she's a chef with a deep understanding of Austin diners and purveyors.

Diner Bar riffs on some of the greatest hits that first spun at its Savannah namesake, which is attached to The Grey. The classically trained Bailey studied in France and worked at Gabrielle Hamilton’s boisterous East Village jewel box Prune before exploring her roots in the American South.

You sense the love of France and the directness and indulgence of Prune, stapled together by the South, in a cross-hatch-seared wiggle of foie gras spotted with strawberry mostarda and perched on an island of grits encircled by a moat of brawny onion gravy ($30).

Bailey’s cooking traces the strong African influence on American cooking. Here, she reaches back to Africa and blends it with the Mexican impact on Texas by creating a dish of ugali (a corn-flour cousin of grits) warmed with a nutty salsa macha that would recognize the South’s ubiquitous benne seed at a global family reunion. The kitchen fries the ugali like a polenta cake, the outside a firm crackle, the interior as soft as porridge ($14).

It’s cool to see a culinary creation that so obviously expresses a sense of place and culinary curiosity that steps outside of the boundaries of the Savannah playbook that has served Bailey so well. I was also told you won’t find seafood boudin at Bailey’s Georgia establishments. Kittrell’s plump, snappy-cased links of salinity and sweetness are kicked up with some Cajun mustard and served alongside a dollop of picnicky potato salad ($16).

Bailey told me in an interview around the time of the Diner Bar’s opening that she really started to become a Southern chef when she met the farmers and fishermen of the region. I don’t know who she’s met down here, but they’re the right people, as evidenced by a tomato and peach salad pooled with turmeric honey yogurt the color of a school bus, a vision that would be at home on a Central Texas farmers calendar ($14).

Texas and the South danced a tame do-si-do with chicken-fried quail perked up with a coffee demi-glace ($34) and a fat shrimp and Carolina Gold rice dish, both frustratingly and curiously undersalted ($28), despite the latter’s pot likker and ham.

The clams and dumplings dish that got its start in Georgia and nods to the late Southern chef Edna Lewis, one of Bailey’s role models, undoubtedly has its fans, but when we encountered the holdover from Savannah, we found the dumplings gummy and some of the clams more tight-lipped than a grand jury witness ($34). Staying in that dumpling vein, you’re better off reaching for the lush little ricotta gnudi awash in corn butter ($22).

I don’t know who came up with my two favorite dishes, or if it really matters if the line leads directly to Prune or France or another source altogether, but the lamb crepinette ($38) and pan-seared trout ($41) were both sublime. The paper-thin casing of the crepinette ripped open to reveal the pure essence of lamb flavor, its rowdiness soothed just the right amount by a whip of pommes purée smoother than the New York City hip-hop flowing from the sound system, and the grassiness of braised leeks and pea tendrils figured out a way to pierce the richness of the trout's brown butter bath.

That simplicity and directness reverberated in a slice of chess pie ($14) that would make any Southerner smile, though any discernible flavor was frozen inside the slightly more inventive chocolate and benne bar with peanut ice cream ($14) that could’ve survived an hour in the Southern sun.

While the Diner Bar gamely recreates the port city pleasures of Bailey’s original restaurants, the Austin space doesn’t hold the same allure or evoke the same sense of romance as The Grey. That’s a tough bar to clear, given the historic nature and exquisite build-out of the latter, but there’s something about the Austin restaurant that feels hurried, if not unfinished.

The art deco and midcentury design elements find most of their harmony at the front of the restaurant in the bar space, but the cut-glass wall blocks at the back of the dining room look like something left over from a 1990s Showtime movie, and the lesser-used entrance from the hotel’s lobby only identified the restaurant with a movie poster-style name placard on a plastic easel. You have one of the country’s most notable chefs in your house, roll out the red carpet.

It may hearten (or depress) other chefs and restaurant owners in town to know that even one of the country’s most famous chefs has had trouble staffing. The dining room floor could have used a couple additional servers during our visits, though, to be fair, one long-scheduled visit came on the heels of Bailey’s Beard triumph, which led to a mostly full weekday dining room, a phenomenon I'm not sure the restaurant had yet experienced.

I sensed that tourists comprised the majority of the crowd on my visits. While I hope they continue to experience Bailey’s and Kittrell’s cooking on their visits, my greater hope is that Austinites discover what’s cooking at the Diner Bar, despite the assumed challenge or annoyance of navigating downtown.

It would be a shame if the restaurant is siloed in the “hotel restaurant” or “celebrity restaurant” categories. The Austin dining scene, like the city itself, will continue to attract outsiders, so luring and keeping the best of them seems like a smart way to cultivate a richer, more diverse future.

Diner Bar

500 San Jacinto Blvd. 737-257-3047, thedinerbar-austin.com

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Hours: Dinner served 5 to 10 p.m. daily. Brunch served 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Prices: Starters, $12-$30. Entrees, $22-41. Desserts, $10.

Highlights: Foie and grits; peach and tomato salad; baked chicken wings; lamb crepinette; pan-seared trout; chess pie.

Expect to pay: $60 (price per person before drinks, tax and tip)

Notes: Paid street parking.

The Bottom Line: Austin should open its arms for Savannah chef Mashama Bailey’s port city-inspired restaurant.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Mashama Bailey's Diner Bar in Austin delivers comfort, taste of South