Today, we’re excited to announce the winners of the 2019 Eater Awards, celebrating the best new restaurants that have made a major impact on the dining scene this year in the city (as well Eater’s 21 other cities).

Eater Austin editors, with the help of reader nominations, selected four finalists in three categories: restaurant of the year, design of the year, and food truck of the year. For eligibility, restaurants must have opened or come into their own from October 2018 through September 2019. The winners below will each receive the traditional Eater tomato can trophy and a feature story within the next year.

Please join us in celebrating this year’s group of winners and, without further ado, here they are.

7301 Burnet Road, Crestview

It might be a little ironic that the best restaurant of 2019 is a place where you technically cook the food yourself, but DipDipDip Tatsu-ya just made going out to eat so gosh darn fun again.

DipDipDip is only the latest in what has become a burgeoning empire from chef and co-owner Tatsu Aikawa and the Tatsu-ya family, which includes three locations of Ramen Tatsu-ya, Texas roadhouse izakaya Kemuri Tatsu-ya (the 2017 Restaurant of the Year winner), patio bar and curry spot Domo Alley-Gato, and forthcoming tiki bar Tiki Tatsu-ya.

The shabu shabu (hot pot) restaurant gives diners a fun Tatsu-ya twist on the genre in an upscale setting. Certainly, there are standards like thin slices of locally sourced beef, pork, and crunchy vegetables (and slices of high-grade wagyu beef). But there are also Texas twists on items, like the Keep Austin Dipping, a shiso kosho queso that pairs perfectly with beef to create essentially a Philly cheesesteak; and gyoza filled with shrimp and spicy cheddar grits. A cart with daily specials keeps the menu fresh and interesting, while the gorgeous custom woodwork from Austin’s A&K Woodworking and Design elevates the atmosphere.

Simply put, DipDipDip is a fun experience that Austinites have gotten excited about. Don’t believe us? Just try making a reservation less than a month in advance. —Erin Russell

501 Colorado Street, Downtown

Amidst the high-rise glass buildings full of condos and offices in downtown Austin is a comparatively short, sleek building housing a single restaurant. Comedor’s physical space is stands apart from the rest of the area, which makes it the perfect arena to showcase inventive upscale modern Mexican fare from an all-star team led by chefs Gabe Erales and Philip Speer.

The modern black brick and steel structure, designed by Seattle-based firm Olson Kundig and led by Tom Kundig, feels as if there should be a body of water or cliffs nearby, say, somewhere in the Hamptons or overlooking Lake Travis. Instead, it’s in bustling downtown Austin, but thanks to tall walls that create an oasis for diners, there is no sense of the city hubbub outside.

As dark as the building materials are, light is plentiful through skillful details. There are high-up windows, a wall of translucent black bricks on the ground floor, and an open-air courtyard in the middle of the space, enterable via retractable glass doors.

It’s fitting that the restaurant was built from the ground-up, especially that the previous life of the address had been a parking lot home to Speer’s charitable trailer My Name Is Joe Coffee Co. One project leads to another, and Austin needed this breath of sophisticated design provided by Comedor. —Nadia Chaudhury

1606 East Sixth Street, East Austin

Food trucks are everywhere in Austin, and among the newcomers of the past year, Southeast Asian truck Talād stood out the most, serving homey dishes from the meals-on-wheels space with humble aspirations.

Talād owners cook what they know: Mary Hermadi is Laotian, and Bee and Arme are Thai. This leads to flavorful dishes made even more impressive because, yeah, it’s made in a food truck. There’s oh-so-rich slow-cooked beef curries, chewy and crispy khao soi noodles, luscious moo ping skewers, and doughy rotis to scrap everything up.

The trio previewed Talād dishes via pop-ups at Asian events to much acclaim, and landed a permanent parking position at a food truck park on East Sixth Street, thankfully for Austin.—Nadia Chaudhury