A Major League Baseball Player Got Inspired By an Austin Restaurant Phone Booth

Brett Baty, the Texas-born and Austin-raised player for the New York Mets, shared that he took technique inspiration from an Austin restaurant with sports publication the Athletic. The third baseman experienced his first phone booth (he is 24 years old, after all) at a “popular taqueria in Austin [...] that makes for cool social media posts,” per the article. He saw how small a phone booth is and thought about how he would swing a bat in a tiny space. Based on those details, Eater Austin is 99.9 percent sure that Baty is talking about the bright pink taco restaurant and bar Taquero Mucho. It’s in downtown Austin and has Instagrammable decor, and — more importantly — two not-functional phone booths lined with florals and neon lights.

Taquero Mucho

Tracking Austin food and drink events

Austin chef and cookbook author Jesse Griffiths is going to be talking about his latest book, The Turkey Book: A Chef’s Journal of Hunting and Cooking America’s Bird, at Hyde Park bookstore First Light Books later this month. The conversation takes place on Friday, April 26 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $50, which come with a copy of the book.

Breakfast taco machine delivery alert

Comedian Joe Pera happened upon one of those automatic food delivery machines while he is in town for his show at the Moontower Comedy festival tonight. He shared his video on Twitter, wondering if it had breakfast tacos.

Texas culinary grant winners

Nonprofit nonprofit Texas Food & Wine Alliance announced the winners of its culinary grants this week. This includes forthcoming Honduran Creole food truck Better Say Grace by chef Grace Aguilar, farmers market stand Mercado Sin Nombre’s future coffee cafe, farm nonprofit Farmshare, Eden East Farm (run by chef Sonya Cote and David Barrow), Antonelli’s Cheese, brewery Independence Brewing Company, food truck Community Vegan, and pig ranch Texas Iberico.

Local restaurant and bar awards

Local website CultureMap announced the Austin winners of its yearly Tastemaker Awards. This includes Bufalina Due’s Eli Rodriguez as the Rising Star Chef, New American wine restaurant Birdie’s for neighborhood restaurant and co-owner Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel for chef, cocktail bar and restaurant Holiday for bar of the year, East Austin bar Daydreamer’s Amanda Carto for bartender, hotel Italian restaurant Poeta for best new restaurant, and Caribbean restaurant Canje as the best restaurant of the year.