Michelin-starred Pasta Bar chefs open casual Italian spot in Round Rock
Michelin-starred Pasta | Bar chefs are bringing handmade pasta and sourdough pizza to Round Rock, opening May 16 in the former Odds Bar + Bistro.
Round Rock is about to get a pasta room with Michelin-star pedigree, and it is not arriving as another red-sauce standby. Frank and Margie’s will open Saturday, May 16, at 1401 S. I-35 Suite 120 in the former Odds Bar + Bistro space, giving the north Austin suburb a chef-driven Italian spot built around handmade pasta, thin-crust pizza and a full bar.
| The new restaurant comes from Phillip Frankland Lee and Margarita Kallas-Lee, the husband-and-wife team behind Pasta | Bar. Their Austin Pasta | Bar closed earlier this year after about four years in business, ending a run that made the East Sixth Street tasting menu one of the city’s most expensive nights out, with prix fixe meals starting at $235. Frank and Margie’s is the pivot: a neighborhood dining room with the same kind of technique, but in a format meant to feel more accessible and more regular. |
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| Lee said the goal is for the room to feel “fun, familiar, and a little unexpected.” The concept will seat 100, a much larger footprint than Pasta | Bar’s counter setup, and it is designed for dinner service Wednesday through Sunday. The bar program will center on Italian wines and Texas beers, a sign that the restaurant is aiming as much for weeknight drop-ins and date nights as for destination diners. |
The food menu pushes well past standard Italian-American comfort. Diners will find lamb ragù pappardelle, lobster cavatelli and rigatoni alla vodka, along with sourdough-based pizzas that lean on Kallas-Lee’s starter. The toppings list should turn heads in Central Texas: pepperoni with candied local jalapeños and a bone-marrow pie are both on the way, a sharper, more playful angle than the usual suburban trattoria playbook.
The kitchen leadership also gives the opening local weight. Grae Nonas, whose résumé includes co-founding executive chef work at Olamaie and a Food & Wine Best New Chef nod, is part of the team. He also cooked in Los Angeles with Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo at Animal and Son of a Gun, bringing another layer of fine-dining muscle to a restaurant that wants to land casually. In a growing Round Rock dining scene, Frank and Margie’s stands out because it is trying to translate serious chef craft into an everyday neighborhood Italian spot, not just export another menu of marinara and meatballs.
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