Measurement · updated October 20, 2026
Austin Restaurant Discovery Report
See which Austin restaurant details are easy to find
Find the gaps that can hide a patio, a family meal or a great evening out. Compare the venue categories below, then open a profile or ask us to check your restaurant.
Category coverage
Every category in the network taxonomy, with the number of Austin venues currently resolving to it. Categories are published as pages at one venue and up. A category at zero is a gap, and gaps are the most useful column in this table.
| Category | Family | Venues | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| In the MICHELIN Guide | The Story | 45 | Covered |
| BBQ and Smokehouses | On the Menu | 13 | Covered |
| Chef-Driven Kitchens | The Story | 11 | Covered |
| Patios and Outdoor Tables | The Room | 6 | Covered |
| Live Music | The Room | 5 | Covered |
| Vegan and Plant-Based | On the Menu | 4 | Covered |
| Brunch | On the Menu | 4 | Covered |
| Private Dining and Buyouts | The Occasion | 4 | Covered |
| The Whole Family Table | The Occasion | 3 | Covered |
| Locally Sourced | What They Stand For | 3 | Covered |
| Origin Stories | The Story | 3 | Covered |
| Craft Cocktail Programs | On the Menu | 2 | Thin |
| Dance Floors | The Room | 1 | Thin |
| Dog-Friendly Patios | The Room | 2 | Thin |
| In the Community | The Story | 1 | Thin |
| Late-Night Food | On the Menu | 1 | Thin |
| Seafood and Oysters | On the Menu | 1 | Thin |
| Sports on TV | The Occasion | 1 | Thin |
| Staff Pay and Benefits | What They Stand For | 1 | Thin |
| Sushi | On the Menu | 2 | Thin |
| Women-Owned | What They Stand For | 1 | Thin |
| Big Groups | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Black-Owned | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Celebration Restaurants | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Date Night | The Occasion | 0 | No coverage |
| Easy to Get Into | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Gluten-Free Kitchens | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Great Views | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Historic Rooms | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Neighborhood Institutions | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Quiet Enough to Talk | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Service Rituals | The Story | 0 | No coverage |
| Steakhouses | On the Menu | 0 | No coverage |
| Sustainable Kitchens | What They Stand For | 0 | No coverage |
| Tableside Experiences | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
| Waterfront Dining | The Room | 0 | No coverage |
What Austin is not discoverable for at all
These are real reasons people choose a restaurant, and right now not one venue in our Austin dataset is filed under any of them. Some of those are our research gaps. Some are the city's. Telling them apart is the next piece of work, and it is the reason this list is published instead of hidden.
- Big Groups Will they seat twelve of us?
- Black-Owned Who owns this?
- Celebration Restaurants Where do we do the birthday?
- Date Night Where do I take somebody I want to impress?
- Easy to Get Into Can everybody at the table get in the door?
- Gluten-Free Kitchens Can this kitchen actually handle it?
- Great Views What am I looking at while I eat?
- Historic Rooms What was this building before?
- Neighborhood Institutions What has been here forever?
- Quiet Enough to Talk Can we actually hear each other?
- Service Rituals What do they do that nobody else does?
- Steakhouses Where do I take a steak night seriously?
- Sustainable Kitchens What happens to what they do not serve?
- Tableside Experiences What happens at the table?
- Waterfront Dining Can I eat next to the water?
What machines can read
Measured on 57 of 57 venue websites. Each bar is the share of scanned sites that pass that check, counting only the sites where we could determine an answer. A site we could not read at all is reported as unknown, never as a failure.
A Restaurant, BarOrPub, or LocalBusiness type is what puts a venue into local answer sets. 26 pass, 29 fail, 2 unknown.
Hours are the most time-sensitive fact in local search and the most commonly stale. 27 pass, 28 fail, 2 unknown.
The description is what gets quoted when a search engine or assistant summarizes the venue. 33 pass, 22 fail, 2 unknown.
Structured data is how a machine knows this page describes a restaurant rather than a blog post. 38 pass, 17 fail, 2 unknown.
A menu behind a PDF or an image is invisible to every system that reads text. 48 pass, 7 fail, 2 unknown.
A site that never states its own address cannot confirm the entity anywhere else. 51 pass, 4 fail, 2 unknown.
A venue whose website cannot be read has no source of truth for any other system to draw on. 55 pass, 2 fail.
Linked profiles are how a machine confirms it is looking at one business and not two. 54 pass, 1 fail, 2 unknown.
Browsers and crawlers both discount sites that are not served securely. 57 pass, 0 fail.
A robots.txt that blocks AI crawlers removes the venue from AI-assisted discovery entirely. 52 pass, 0 fail, 5 unknown.
Who leads the categories that matter most
Ranked on measured readability, not on opinion and not on spend. A venue climbs this by publishing more about itself in a form a machine can read.
In the MICHELIN Guide
- Din Ho Chinese BBQ 94% readable
- Este 94% readable
- Fabrik 94% readable
BBQ and Smokehouses
- Din Ho Chinese BBQ 94% readable
- Franklin Barbecue 94% readable
- Mum Foods Smokehouse & Delicatessen 94% readable
Chef-Driven Kitchens
Patios and Outdoor Tables
- Birdie's 88% readable
- The BE Hive Austin 82% readable
- Launderette 76% readable
How this was measured
Venue records are researched by hand and dated. Nothing is guessed: a field we cannot verify is left empty, and an empty field counts against the record rather than getting filled with something plausible.
Website checks are run by our own scanner against each venue's own site and its robots.txt. It reads what is publicly served, at normal request rates, identifying itself honestly. It does not log in, does not scrape anything behind a form, and stores only the pass, fail, or unknown result of each check.
Discovery categories are resolved from a venue's structured attributes plus explicit editorial tagging for the things attributes cannot express, like an origin story or a service ritual. The full category taxonomy is public at /data/discovery-categories.json and the venue dataset is public at /api/places.json.
Venues can pay for extra attention here. Paid spots are always labeled as sponsored and kept out of every measurement on this page. A score only moves when what a venue shows the world gets better.
Want your own line in this report?
We will tell you what we can currently discover about your restaurant, what search and AI appear able to understand about it, and what they are missing. That part is free.