Fall Additions Near Mount Bonnell: Laguna Gloria and Allday Pizza

If you live near Mount Bonnell, you already know the shape of a good Saturday. You climb the limestone steps before the heat sets in, stand at the overlook for exactly as long as it takes to remember why you moved here, and then you get back in the car. You might then head elsewhere for dinner or a gallery.

This fall, for the first time in a while, that pattern is loosening from two directions at once. On one end of the corridor that runs past your front door, The Contemporary Austin just opened its most substantial season in years, with exhibitions at Laguna Gloria and its downtown Jones Center. On the other end, a pizza shop with real Tarrytown roots is about to open the biggest dining room it has ever built, a few minutes up the same stretch of road toward Northwest Hills. Neither is a coincidence exactly, but neither is random either. The Laguna Gloria programming and the pizza shop are landing within weeks of each other, and together they change what a weeknight near Mount Bonnell can actually look like.

Laguna Gloria's Fall Program

Laguna Gloria has always been the quieter neighbor to Mount Bonnell's main event. You'd walk the grounds after the overlook, admire a sculpture or two, and move on. This season gives you a reason to plan around it instead of tacking it onto a hike.

The Contemporary Austin's fall lineup pairs a retrospective called The Living Temple: The World of Moki Cherry, its largest U.S. exhibition of the artist to date, with HOST: Laura Lit, the first solo museum exhibition for the Austin-based artist. The Cherry retrospective lives at the museum's downtown Jones Center, but Laura Lit's show does something the neighborhood hasn't seen in a while: it extends outdoors, marking her debut installation in the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria itself, on the same 14-acre site you can see from the Mount Bonnell overlook.

If you want a specific date to build a weekend around, mark October 18. That Sunday is The Very 'Rary, the museum's once-a-year fundraiser and its fifth run, an afternoon of hands-on art, wearable design, and interactive installations spread across the sculpture park grounds. It benefits the museum's K-12 arts programs, which reach more than 25,000 young people a year, and it is exactly the kind of afternoon that used to require driving into town. Now it is close enough to walk to from a lot of Mount Bonnell addresses.

Allday Pizza Plans a New Dining Room

The other end of the corridor has a longer story behind it, and it starts nowhere near Northwest Hills at all.

Allday Pizza began as a pizza truck out of the Sammataro scene before its founders, Sorg and Townsend Smith, opened a counter spot inside Flo's Wine Bar & Bottle Shop in Tarrytown back in 2023. From there it grew into a Hyde Park counter operation with the kind of line out the door that regulars from both neighborhoods have come to expect on a Friday night. What it never had, in any location, was a real dining room.

That changes this year. Allday is moving into the former Reid's Dry Cleaners & Laundry building at 3720 FM 2222, near Dry Creek Drive, and turning it into the brand's biggest space yet, with indoor and outdoor seating and a full bar program built around a hybrid model that keeps the walk-up counter while adding table service. Construction was aiming to wrap in early June with a summer 2026 opening window, according to permit tracking reported by Hoodline. No one locked in an exact open date publicly as of that report, which means if you drive past 3720 FM 2222 this month, there is a real chance the doors are already open, or close enough that you should just go check.

Allday Pizza, with roots in Tarrytown and Hyde Park, is expanding into this stretch of Northwest Hills. Its planned space includes indoor and outdoor seating and a full bar, alongside the corridor's existing dining options.

Why This Particular Stretch, Why Now

Northwest Hills has never lacked for places to eat. The neighborhood's everyday dining bench runs along Mesa Drive and Anderson Lane, a mix of taco counters, a Greek kitchen, an Indian and Nepalese spot, and the kind of casual Mexican food that residents default to on a Tuesday. Allday's new space is planned to offer a full sit-down option with a bar program, adding another choice to the neighborhood's dining mix.

Laguna Gloria's outdoor programming and Allday's planned dining room offer different ways to spend time near Mount Bonnell. The museum program adds an option after a hike, while the restaurant will bring indoor and outdoor seating and a bar to the corridor.

None of this changes the character that made you want to live near Mount Bonnell in the first place. The overlook is still free, still open from five in the morning until ten at night, and still the same short, steep walk it has always been. What's different is what happens before and after that walk. A Sunday that used to end with the drive home from the summit can now end with an afternoon at the sculpture park instead. A Friday that used to mean picking between familiar counter-service options on Anderson Lane could soon bring another choice, with a bar and a booth.

Small changes, arriving close together, tend to feel bigger than they are on paper. This is one of those moments. If you've lived in this pocket of Austin long enough to have a routine, it might be worth breaking it, just for a few weeks this fall, to see what's actually changed.

If you're weighing a move into this part of Austin, or thinking about what a stretch like this one signals for a neighborhood over time, Brande Draper has spent nearly three decades watching Austin's central and northwest pockets shift block by block. Let's Connect if you'd like a conversation grounded in what's actually happening here, not just what the listing photos show.