How Tarrytown's 1939 Shopping Center Became West Austin's Vegan Dinner Corner

"We don't serve diet food here. We're deep frying it. This isn't rabbit food!" Marlon Rison told the Austin Chronicle this spring, standing in the dining room of Community Kitchen + Taproom at 3110 Windsor Road. Two months later, Fabrik, a plant-based tasting room, moved in at 3108 Windsor. The corner of Windsor and Exposition now has two all-vegan kitchens sharing a wall, one frying oyster mushrooms by the bucket and the other plating eight courses on a seasonal schedule.

This pairing was no accident of the leasing market. Both restaurants landed in the Tarrytown Shopping Center for the same reason, and that reason is more than 25 years old.

A corner with a long memory

The Tarrytown Shopping Center dates to 1939. According to Texas Monthly, it was the first of its kind in Austin and one of the first in Texas. It went up on either side of Exposition Boulevard just north of Windsor, with red tile roofs and California-Spanish styling. Margaret Graham Crusemann and her brother-in-law, Niles Graham, built it on part of the Pease family's Woodlawn estate. They named it after Tarrytown, New York, a favorite family retreat, and that name later stuck to the whole neighborhood.

The property passed down through the family. In 1999, Jeanne Crusemann Daniels inherited it from her mother. Texas Monthly reported in 2007 that she brought in lease rules barring the sale of animal products and of items that could harm animals. Under those rules, the liquor store dropped gift baskets that included caviar, and the shoe repair shop moved its leather laces to the back. Mousetraps, leather eyeglass cases, and children's shoes and belts came off shelves elsewhere in the center. Texas French Bread's Tarrytown branch took turkey and tuna sandwiches off its lunch menu in exchange for a one-year lease extension. Its founder later said the change led directly to that location closing. By 2007, a vegetarian restaurant called NuAge had taken over the old Holiday House space on the corner.

That reporting is nearly two decades old, and the center has changed hands among tenants many times since. What a 2007 article can't tell anyone is whether a vegan-only lease would ever find tenants who could make it work over the long run. The past decade answered that, one restaurant at a time.

How the corner filled in

The timeline shows one food concept holding a single address for years, then a second arriving next door:

• 1939: The shopping center opens on Exposition north of Windsor.
• 1999: Ownership passes to Jeanne Crusemann Daniels, and the animal-product restrictions follow.
• September 27, 2016: The Beer Plant, a vegan gastropub, opens at 3110 Windsor.
• December 22, 2024: The Beer Plant serves its last day.
• Spring 2026: Community Kitchen + Taproom opens in the former Beer Plant building, and the Austin Chronicle publishes a first look on May 8.
• July 14, 2026: Fabrik relocates from East Austin to 3108 Windsor.
• October 19, 2026: Fabrik's Autumn tasting menu begins.

The Beer Plant held 3110 Windsor for a little over eight years, which shows a plant-based restaurant could last on this corner. Its closure left an empty space with a ready-made fit for the next vegan operator. In its May coverage, the Chronicle said the takeover would surprise no one who knows the landlord. With Fabrik on its way to the same plaza, the paper wrote, her vision of turning the strip into a center of vegan culture for West Austin was close to coming true.

Two kitchens, two different evenings

The two restaurants share a lease rule and a property line, and almost nothing else. That's why the corner works as a dining destination: a Tarrytown household can use it for a Sunday brunch with kids and for an anniversary dinner, without either restaurant competing with the other.

Community Kitchen + Taproom started as Community Vegan, a food truck run by Austin native Ericka Dotson and Victoria native Marlon Rison. It spent a few years near Kenny Dorham's Backyard in East Austin, then had a short stint at the former Roland's Soul Food building on Chestnut before moving to Windsor. The menu is Southern comfort food built mostly on mushrooms. Lion's mane comes as nuggets, called the Dime Bag, and oyster mushrooms are fried in a batter Rison says is his mother's recipe. The brisket and burnt ends are shiitake, and the Chronicle reported that Billie Eilish's team requested them when she played Moody Center. For the old-school order, the bucket comes fast-food style with fried oyster mushrooms, fries, rolls and house sauces. Among the sides, the macaroni and cheeze is Dotson's recipe, and the collard greens, candied yams, cornbread and banana pudding round out the soul food table. Chef Kevin Rowe works the kitchen alongside the owners.

The dining room has plants, books, and screens showing nature scenes. Rison told the Chronicle the idea was to bring an element of nature into a comfortable space, since he and Dotson are both hikers. The bar pours local beer, cider, draft cocktails, draft wine and zero-proof drinks. Sunday brunch runs every week with biscuits, pancakes, grits, mimosas and bottomless coffee.

Fabrik came to Tarrytown after three years on East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Owners Je and Silas Wallerstein announced the move in March and said the new space gives them room to grow. Je is the executive chef and holds a diploma in plant-based cuisine from Le Cordon Bleu London. Silas runs the dining room and comes from a background in product development and design. The restaurant aims for a cross between a chef's table, fine dining and a mom-and-pop spot, with a seasonal menu built on locally sourced ingredients. The summer tasting opened with sticky leeks, white bean dip and house bread. It moved through mushroom cappelletti and cornbread madeleines and finished with a banana miso mousse and a yuzu macaron. The optional wine pairing covers five wines from Spain, California, France and Portugal. Sake, kombucha, beer and nonalcoholic wine are also on the list.

A month after the move, the Wallersteins told Community Impact that their whole team had come with them to the new location, and that they had been seeing many familiar faces come through the door.

Planning around the fall calendar

Community is the easier one to fit into a week. Its posted hours are dinner Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m.; Friday lunch from noon to 2 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 9 p.m.; Saturday from noon to 9 p.m.; and the Sunday brunch and full menu from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Fabrik takes more planning. Its OpenTable listing shows the Summer tasting running through October 9. The Autumn eight-course tasting runs October 19 through January 15, 2027, at the same $105 price. The autumn dishes hadn't been posted as of early October. When checked on October 5, the listing's next open table was November 10. For dates that are booked, Fabrik's own reservations page links to a waitlist. The OpenTable page lists two different sets of service days and seating times in separate sections, so confirm the night directly before planning around it.

In practice, anyone hoping to try the autumn menu before Thanksgiving should book now. Anyone who just wants mushroom brisket and a mimosa can walk over any Sunday from 11 to 3.

I've lived in Austin long enough to remember plenty of tenants coming and going on Exposition. Corners like Windsor and Exposition play a real part in what a Tarrytown address feels like day to day. If you'd like to talk about how the shops and restaurants close to a particular street fit the way you live, or what they might mean when it's time to sell, Brande Draper would be glad to walk you through it. Let's Connect.