Fabrik is relocating to 3108 Windsor Road, where a larger kitchen and open-kitchen layout will allow the team to create a more immersive, chef’s table-style dining experience. The plant-based fine dining restaurant, owned by Chef Je Wallerstein and her husband, Silas Wallerstein, is targeting a mid-July opening following a soft-opening period for regular guests. The relocation brings the restaurant into a larger space, where diners will have a direct view of the kitchen and the culinary team behind its seasonal tasting menus.
The move comes after the restaurant outgrew its previous kitchen. While the original location helped establish Fabrik’s reputation, Co-owners said limited prep space increasingly constrained the team’s ambitions.”The new location has more of an open kitchen, so it’s a little bit more of a chef’s table vibe,” they told WhatNow Austin. “We just really needed more kitchen space.”
The redesigned restaurant will allow guests to watch much of the action unfold in real time, creating what the Wallersteins describes as an experience reminiscent of an omakase counter while maintaining private seating arrangements.
Fabrik was originally created to fill a gap the owners saw in Austin’s dining landscape after Chef Je returned from London. At the time, she couldn’t find the type of plant-based fine dining restaurant where she wanted to work. “We decided to take a leap of faith and create that ourselves.” That philosophy continues to shape the restaurant today. Local Texas agriculture remains the starting point for every menu, with sustainability and waste reduction woven throughout the culinary process.
For Chef Je, menu development begins months before guests ever see a dish. She studies seasonal produce forecasts from Texas farms and builds ideas around what will soon be available. “I usually just start with a bit of a brain dump of all my ideas,” she said to WhatNow Austin, “there’s that sort of initial inception of the idea that comes from what is local.”
From there, experimentation takes over. Ingredients are tested, refined and evaluated not only for flavor but also for how much waste they generate. Vegetable scraps that might otherwise be discarded often find a second life elsewhere on the menu. She describes the process as highly intuitive and collaborative, with ideas constantly evolving through conversations with Wallerstein and the kitchen team.
Among all seasons, autumn remains her favorite source of inspiration.
“Autumn always gets me fixated,” she said. “That’s definitely tethered to my own nostalgia growing up in New Hampshire.” Those personal memories often make their way onto the plate through warming preparations, squash-based dishes and low-waste techniques that transform peels and trimmings into ingredients for future courses.
Although the new restaurant marks what Wallerstein calls “a new era” for Fabrik, expansion is not currently on the horizon. “Our whole hearts go into this,” they said. “Anything beyond that would potentially jeopardize how much time and investment we can put into this project,” they told WhatNow Austin.
For now, the focus remains on opening the new space and continuing the creative, sustainability-driven approach.
For more information, follow Fabrik on Instagram.
