Lutie's Garden Restaurant Media Highlights

I audibly gasped each time I encountered this butter terrine, first gently melting on a stack of pancakes, and again when it arrived on a plate as part of the bread service at Lutie's. Chefs Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu alternate layers of cultured and brown butter in a pan, chill it until it's solid, and then cut slices off of the terrine to reveal a beautiful slab of striped butter that adds a multitude of flavor to any dish.

Go ahead and book your spot now. Lutie’s, the new restaurant at the Commodore Perry Estate in Austin, Texas, has grabbed the attention of so many Austinites that reservations are currently booked through the fall. “So many folks have a connection to this place and want to experience its rebirth,” says executive chef Bradley Nicholson of the 1920s Italianate mansion turned resort in the heart of town. “We named the restaurant after Edgar Perry’s wife,” says Ken Fulk, the Virginia-born, San Francisco–based interior designer who headed the project. “The goal was to conjure the legendary parties that may have been held on the estate and evoke the delight of being a guest at one of these evening garden parties in the 1920s.” He manifested that vision with custom floral patterns, tumbled marble floors, wrought-iron furniture, latticework on the ceiling, scalloped banquettes, velvet bar stools, and Murano chandeliers. “It is utterly familiar,” Fulk says, “yet unlike any restaurant you’ve seen.” The food, too, is worth the wait. “My favorite dishes are the Estate Bread and the okra with Guajillo and grilled pecan sauce,” Nicholson says. “I also recommend the Delta Blues Rice; the dish is so simple but is a good example of how I like to layer flavor and texture.” By CAROLINE SANDERS

Interior designer Ken Fulk, whose clients include Pharrell Williams, conceptualized the glamorous space for Lutie’s, the new garden restaurant at Auberge Resorts’ Commodore Perry Estate. Husband-and-wife chefs Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu (pictured) have crafted a seasonal menu that artfully blends seafood and vegetarian fare with classic dishes like Texas beef with marrow and sweet potato.

If you have time to dine at only one adorable new restaurant overlooking the lovely gardens of a meticulously restored Mediterranean Revival villa built in 1928 by a wealthy Texas cotton magnate and his socialite wife, let it be Lutie’s. The jewel box of a dining room, boasting a chic black-and-white tile floor and a veritable rain forest of plants, is the centerpiece of a historic Austin property known as the Commodore Perry Estate. Because it is finally open after a year’s delay (thanks, of course, to COVID-19) and because its prestigious chefs have Michelin-starred kitchens on their résumés, Lutie’s has been getting the kind of fanatical attention that Texans normally devote to our best barbecue joints. Reservations are so scarce that the truly desperate are making them online at midnight three months in advance, the instant a new batch becomes available. And if you’re thinking you can just show up and find an empty table, forget it. There’s a cancellation wait list too.

There’s a new oasis of culinary paradise in the Commodore Perry Estate across from H-E-B-anchored Hancock Center? Yes, and, in keeping with its resort-level surroundings, it’s elegantly appointed and redolent of how locally sourced foods can represent the finest of contemporary dining à la chef Bradley Nicholson. Not-so-secret weapon: pastry chef Susana Querejazu. We’re in love with the “green dish.”

Chef Susana Querejazu takes a glam approach to a creamy classic at Commodore Perry's buzzworthy new restaurant. With Michelin-starred credentials on her resume (Saison and Quince Restaurant in San Francisco), it might seem downright quaint that executive pastry chef Susana Querejazu chose a bowl of soft serve as her signature dessert at Lutie’s. But this is no ordinary ice cream—especially those dispensed from the quick pull of a lever. Using seasonal produce, such as Poteetgrown strawberries, she roasts, purées, and strains the fruit to achieve the maximum essence of her chosen flavor. Next comes a master class in chemistry—or at least molecular gastronomy—as she tinkers with local Mill-King milk to secure the uniformity and texture necessary for her nostalgic medium. Want that custardy consistency with minimal crystallization? That requires binding agents like xanthan gum and guar gum measured out in exacting portions. Even that commonplace vessel, the cone, is shunned for a vintage rose-tinted Depression glass that the chef scouted for herself. “There’s a lot more work to pulling this off than you’d think, but that seems to be our thing,” says Querejazu, who helms the restaurant with her longtime partner, Bradley Nicholson. “We like to make simple things way harder than they need to be.”

The high-end restaurant, from Austin power couple Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu, made its public debut in April within private members club-slash-hotel Commodore Perry Estate. The New Texan menu features plentiful local produce and meats, from the grand aioli to the charcoal-grilled chicken served with hominy. Don’t skip desserts, especially the luxurious kouign amann ice cream. The lush space is an added bonus. The restaurant is only open for dine-in dinner service, with a patio available. Required reservations are extremely limited for the public.

Step back into the Jazz Age at Lutie’s on the Commodore Perry Estate where black and white tiles guide you to emerald velvet scalloped bar stools, and the simmering glow from ginormous windows provides a peek over the sunken English gardens below. Texas Heritage cuisine is on the menu and everything is made in house. Fresh garden hand rolls and homestyle estate bread make sense alongside New Orleans-vibe royal red shrimp with daikon and Texas beef with marrow and sweet potato. And don’t skip on sweets like River Whey blue cheese with smoked pecans and preserved fig, and bees wax creme caramel.

Not many restaurants transport diners to the past, but just in time for the second coming of the roaring ’20s, the brand-new Lutie’s is a relic of the Jazz Age. Housed in Commodore Perry Estate, a 100-year-old mansion-turned-luxury-hotel, the restaurant centers an elegant terrace overlooking a sprawling Gatsby-esque lawn adorned with tasteful string lights. Inside, the Ken Fulk-designed space pairs vintage tiling with deep-turquoise velvet furniture and a ceiling covered in lush green plants. Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu, the husband-wife team at the restaurant’s helm, came up in some of Austin’s top dining establishments, including Uchi and Barley Swine, so they know culinary Austin — and it shows. Fun appetizers such as sunchoke falafel meet artful cocktails like the Indigo Kick (vanilla-infused vodka, blackberry basil shrub, local honey, lemon, and ginger beer). The kouign amann ice cream is a don’t-miss dessert.

It’s hard to decide whether the biggest draw is the imaginative menu (from chefs Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu) or the lovely little plant-filled dining room, with its black-and-white-tiled floor and view over the sweeping grounds of the Commodore Perry estate (now a boutique hotel). Order this: A fun light starter is Lutie’s novel falafel, tidy nuggets of ground sunchoke and sesame seeds dabbed with aioli. Piscivores might consider the svelte filet of halibut or white cod (depending on availability) on Delta Blues white rice sprinkled with smoky coral spheres of trout roe. Or perhaps tender Royal Red shrimp with a buttery New Orleans–style barbecue treatment. Meat eaters should order Yonder Way Farm pork, fatty and delectably crisped, in a sassy pickled cabbage broth. For dessert, a smooth and creamy blue cheese from River Whey Creamery comes with smoked pecans and a dense, sweet preserved fig. Pro tip: Reserve well ahead for outdoor seating; no takeout for now.

While members and guests of the Commodore Perry Estate — the historic mansion turned membership club and hotel — have been enjoying the food and drinks of the property since June, as of this week, the rest of Austin will have the opportunity to sample the exquisite offerings in equally as stylish surroundings. Lauded Austin chef couple Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu mark their return to the city from San Francisco with the highly anticipated opening of high-end Texan restaurant Lutie’s Garden Restaurant in the Hancock neighborhood. The food at Lutie’s, as Nicholson describes it, is “a little bit more creative, a lot more of a reflection of what Susanna and I’ve been working on, based on Texas cuisines. There’ll be a nice mix of very simple things and then some things that are kind of flashy.”

Maybe it’s a little too soon to jet on over to a charming European villa and dine on elevated cuisine handcrafted by renowned chefs. Luckily, you don’t have to, as one such long-anticipated and perfectly stunning restaurant is now open in Central Austin. Promising to blend relaxed European charm with gracious Texas hospitality, Lutie’s is named after the estate’s matriarch, Nannie Lewette “Lutie” Perry, and evokes the spirit of the Jazz Age, when the property was built and became the country home of Lutie and Commodore Edgar Perry. With a backdrop featuring the historic estate and abundant sunken gardens, Lutie’s summons thoughts of lavish soirees and maybe even conjures up fanciful notions of The Great Gatsby.

When married chefs Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu announced in December 2019 their return to Austin from San Francisco to open Lutie’s Garden Restaurant at the Commodore Perry Estate, they could not have imagined what the next few months would bring. The Auberge Resorts Collection hotel and private club eventually opened at the end of June, and the chefs, who both worked at Barley Swine before heading to some of San Francisco’s top restaurants, stayed busy serving hotel guests and club members. Now, almost a year after its intended opening, the chefs get to unveil the crown jewel of the jazz-era property’s dining options. Lutie’s Garden Restaurant, named after estate matriarch Nannie Lewette “Lutie” Perry, will open to the general public for dinner service on April 14, with mandatory reservations now being accepted via OpenTable.