Award-winning Italian Spot Poeta Moves Into East Austin Hotel

When Poeta, the Italian restaurant from chefs Ian Thurwachter and Krystal Craig, announced its closure mere days after receiving a Michelin Recommendation, worried diners should have anticipated greater plans were in the works. Poeta is moving into the East Austin Hotel at 1108 East 6th Street, taking over both the hotel’s restaurant and bar spaces — including late-night dining. It will open with a special brunch service on Thursday, January 1. 

Second Bar + Kitchen, the hotel’s current restaurant, will continue to operate the space on weekdays during the day, while Poeta will take over nightly dinner and weekend brunch. 

This latest iteration of Poeta will highlight local ingredients and house-made pastas with offerings like rigatoni with tomato butter and Italian sausage and chévre cheesecake with pistachio and cherry. Brunch will see the return of the restaurant’s famed wafflegato, along with items like brunch arancini and a breakfast sandwich. In addition to a la carte items, there will be a chef’s tasting menu offered at dinner.

Poeta will also be taking over the upstairs lounge and bar, offering cocktails and a la carte dining options daily, staying open until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. 

In a complicated game of Austin real estate chess, this is the third location for Poeta, and it sort-of replaces the fourth location of Second Bar + Kitchen. Poeta, the sister restaurant of Thurwachter and Craig’s equally lauded restaurant Intero debuted in the Frances Modern Inn in Central East Austin in December 2023. Then, in March 2025 it moved into Swoop House in Govalle with a prix-fixe-only menu, before closing in November. 

The team cited occupancy limits as the reason for moving on from Swoop House. Ayse Iyriboz, who did the interior design for that gorgeous location of Poeta, will again be working with the team again to bring Poeta to the East Austin Hotel. 

Second Bar has a storied history in Austin, opening in 2010 at the corner of 2nd Street and Congress Avenue with hotshot chef David Bull, a James Beard Award nominee and Food & Wine Best New Chef (Bull is now an executive at the restaurant’s hospitality group, La Corsha Hospitality). It has opened and closed three times: the original closed in 2020; a location at the Archer Hotel at the Domain was open from 2016 to 2023; and from 2023 until October 2025, it was a piece of the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells, near Dallas. There’s a location at the airport that opened in 2017, and it feels dangerously close to becoming another Austin restaurant that only lives at the airport. Second Bar opened at the East Austin Hotel in 2022 (taking over the hotel’s first crop of restaurants). 

Second Bar + Kitchen will supposedly rise again in 2028—this time as part of a massive renovation at the historic Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells. 

Following Poeta’s New Year’s Day brunch, Poeta will open Friday, January 5, serving dinner Sunday through Thursday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday (with service until midnight in the bar). Brunch will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.