L'Oca d'Oro

L'Oca d'Oro is an Italian-inspired neighbourhood restaurant in the Mueller district, opened in June 2016 by chef Fiore Tedesco and co-owner Adam Orman after three years of pop-ups and supper clubs. Tedesco came up through Roberta's and Gramercy Tavern in New York and was named a StarChefs Rising Star for Austin–San Antonio in 2017. The Austin Chronicle's Brandon Watson reviewed it that September with a line that still fits the place: luxury isn't preening, but when you find it, it's hard to notice anything else.

The restaurant is as well known for how it operates as for what it cooks — sustainable, local sourcing and a stated commitment to staff compensation, in a business where neither is standard. The Austin American-Statesman named it the city's best restaurant in 2022.

The bar carries a menu-listed No / Very Low ABV section rather than an improvised one. The School Night Spritz is strawberry cordial with fresh basil and mint, lime and bubbles. The Dry County O.F. is the more interesting build: dark-roast yaupon tea with a yerba-orange cordial and house orange and aromatic bitters, working as a zero-proof Old Fashioned.

Yaupon is worth knowing about. It is a holly native to Texas and the American Southeast, and the only caffeinated plant indigenous to North America — dark-roasted it gives tannin, body and a woody bitterness that stands in for barrel-aged spirit remarkably well. Using a local plant to solve the hardest problem in zero-proof drinks, rather than importing a bottled substitute, is exactly the sourcing philosophy the kitchen runs on, applied to the bar.

A Ritual Zero Proof gin alternative can be paired with house Italian sodas — limonata, orange cream, basil-lime, tangerine-rosemary — and there is Lost Pines yaupon iced tea and Rambler sparkling water. Bar and patio service runs Tuesday to Sunday from 4pm.