{"id":424295,"date":"2026-09-02T20:36:44","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T20:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424295\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T20:36:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T20:36:44","slug":"longstanding-restaurant-to-close-south-congress-location","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/424295\/","title":{"rendered":"Longstanding restaurant to close South Congress location"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A family-owned Ethiopian restaurant is closing the doors to one of its longtime locations after more than a decade in business.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tasteofethiopiaaustin.com\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Taste of Ethiopia<\/a> in\u00a0Austin will be shuttering its South Congress Avenue after 12 years at the\u00a0end of the month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s like four times or three times more than what we used to pay four or five years ago. So it&#8217;s because of that. Everything is expensive in this area,\u201d Mariam told KVUE. \u201cSouth Congress has become very expensive. And we just \u2013 it&#8217;s beyond our means.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, South Congress has lost\u00a0dozens of legacy, longstanding businesses to rising rent and redevelopment efforts. Today, South Congress is home to high-end storefronts like Alo, Reformation, LoveShackFancy,\u00a0Herm\u00e8s and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mariam and Hailu first opened Taste of Ethiopia in the Austin suburb of\u00a0Pflugerville, then demand from their customers led them to expand south in 2016. The restaurant is known for its vegan Ethiopian food buffet and serving authentic Ethiopian coffee (Buna) with a traditional ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The pair said they will keep its original Pflugerville restaurant at 1100 Grand Avenue Pkwy.,\u00a0Pflugerville, TX 78660 open as they plan to find a new space in Austin. MySA reached out to Taste of Ethiopia&#8217;s owners for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family-owned Ethiopian restaurant is closing the doors to one of its longtime locations after more than a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2108,820],"class_list":["post-424295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-mysaaustin","tag-mysastaff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}