The Merguez Goat ($20) includes pickled red onion, harissa red sauce, chevre, loterria vecchio and mint. (Courtesy Astra Restaurant Bar) (Courtesy Astra Restaurant + Ba)
A new restaurant serving locally sourced, scratch-made cuisine has opened in downtown Buda.
Owner Mattison Bills said she is fulfilling a lifelong dream to open a restaurant like Astra.
“The concept itself is something that I’ve been ruminating on for a decade,” Bills said. “The local sourcing, everything scratch-made, the sourdough program is really a huge part of my identity; the handmade pasta. It's really built on recipes that I've been making for a decade.”
On the menu
Every item on the menu at Astra is scratch-made with no commercial ingredients, with produce being locally sourced or grown in the restaurant’s own 6,000-square-foot urban farm in San Antonio. The menu follows a similar framework throughout the year, but rotates seasonal vegetables to bring the best quality produce to the plate.
Even the sourdough breads served with sandwiches are scratch-made from local organic flour from Barton Springs Mill, and fired daily in the wood-fired oven.
Barton Springs Mill also provides the flour used to make the pizza dough and pasta noodles used in dishes at Astra, using strains of flour carefully selected to complement the dishes.
Items that can be found on the menu include sandwiches like the Turkey Pep, made with oak-smoked turkey, housemade pepperoni, fresh mozzarella, cucumber pickle, aioli, chili crisp, onion and arugula. Starters include a Redfish Crudo made with Texas redfish, apple, peanut and local herbs.
Hardier dishes include the pork belly and half chicken, and multiple wood-fired pizzas are also on the menu, such as the Confit Coppa Ham, which includes blue cheese, caramelized onion, garlic confit and arugula.
“I really wanted to have a lighter, more scratch-made cuisine, still have the wood-fired oven and everything locally sourced, and that is basically the backbone of what Astra is,” Bills said.
The Turkey Pep sandwich ($17) includes housemade and oak-smoked pepperoni and turkey. (Courtesy Astra Restaurant + Bar)
The framework
Bills said it is important to her to eat fresh food because if people don’t make it themselves, they don’t know where it comes from.
“There are so many middlemen in the food industry; it's honestly scary, and the second you start relying on other people to make your food, you completely lose touch with who you're supporting, what it's doing for the environment, what it's doing to your body,” Bills said.
Alongside a robust food menu, the restaurant features a bar that crafts artisan cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks created by Beverage Director and Cocktail Consultant Lauren Beckman.
“I really hope that it becomes a neighborhood favorite for people,” Bills said. “I know it will be a special hidden spot for some, but I really hope it's a place people can come [to] back again and again.”
The Paloma with miso foam ($13) is one of the many cocktails that can be found on the menu. (Courtesy Astra Restaurant + Bar)
Meet the owner
Bills was an environmental science major at St. Edward’s University in Austin before she took a semester off to pursue what she thought could be her dream at the time—to be a farmer.
“I saw that there were so many bad things going on with our food system, and I was like, ‘What we need is young farmers,’” Bills said.
This led her to begin working with Johnson’s Backyard Garden, helping to run its operations at Texas Farmers' Market at Mueller, which taught her about local producers.
Her love and passion for locally sourced cuisine have led her to have a successful career opening several other restaurants, food trucks and food concepts before opening Astra.
Bills was a co-founder of Mum Foods, a smokehouse and delicatessen that pops up at farmers' markets throughout the Austin area. She sold her stake in Mum Foods in 2019 and opened Three Six General in San Marcos, a local grocer and butcher shop that cures and smokes locally sourced, humanely raised meats—including all of the meat on the Astra menu—and sells local organic produce. In addition to these ventures, Bills had the opportunity to join the Food Hall at The Pearl in San Antonio with a restaurant called Howdy Child.
Astra owner Mattison Bills has dedicated her career to sustainability practices and supporting locally produced food distributors throughout the Central Texas region. (Courtesy Astra Restaurant + Bar)
Zooming out
Bills said Astra was made possible by the community of people she has found throughout her career, including Astra general manager Daniel Guadiano, who found the Buda location; Brooke Dinsmore, the general manager of Three Six General; and Nicolas Rivard, an architect from Glass Mountain Construction, who helped redesign the interior and exterior of the restaurant.
“It's because of that community aspect, it's because of the local sourcing, it's because people care so much that everybody wants to stick around, and there's like something meaningful happening here,” Bills said. “We're not just like any old restaurant; we're not just like turning this into a franchise. There's something way more meaningful behind it all, which has been awesome.”
