These New-School Quesos Make Austin’s Beloved Cheese Dip Even More Exciting

These New-School Quesos Make Austin’s Beloved Cheese Dip Even More Exciting

Gussied-up cheese dips with black garlic, beet powder, and more.

At the city’s popular annual queso cooking competition, Quesoff, restaurant staffers and home chefs stretch the limits of what queso means (one year’s queso gelato lives on in infamy). And now, Austin restaurants offer quesos made with beet powder, black garlic, kimchi powder, and even (gasp) cashews instead of cheese.

Here are some of the best examples of Austin keeping it weird in queso form.

The Queso Dip at Yellow Ranger

The self-described “irreverent American-Chinese bar comfort food” restaurant Yellow Ranger may have only opened in April, but its black garlic-spiked queso dip is already making waves. Chef and owner Jeremy Young acknowledges the Austin queso scene is strong, but adopted a “challenge accepted” attitude toward the cheese dip. The black garlic gets its name from being cooked for a long time until it becomes almost sweet.

“Queso is a fairly blank canvas for flavor,” Young told me in an email. “Black garlic is prevalent in East Asian cooking, and we chose it to season our queso because it adds tremendous depth and complexity to what could otherwise be a one-flavor-note dish.”

Yellow Ranger’s queso is then dressed up more with house-made kimchi powder, house-made chile crisp to mimic hot sauce, and green onions to provide freshness. The queso is served with wonton chips and, in perhaps a controversial move, wok-charred broccoli. “Broccoli and cheese are classic lovers,” defends Young. It works.

Inside Golden Horn at 5420 Airport Boulevard, North Loop; there are indoor and outdoor dine-in areas; official website.

The Loaded Queso at Better Half

When it comes to new-school queso, the all-day cafe’s version immediately comes to mind. The restaurant has won Quesoff twice, and it’s a favorite of Statesman food critic Matthew Odam.

The original queso from then-chef Rich Reimbolt paired the melty cheese dip with house-made pastrami, smashed avocado, crema, asadero cheese, pickled onions, and beet powder. However, Reimbolt is now at the Tatsu-ya group (hot pot restaurant, DipDipDip Tatsu-ya also serves up a queso dipping sauce made with shiso for its shabu-shabu), and Better Half’s recipe has adjusted, swapping pastrami for carnitas. Still, the more-is-more approach pays off, resulting in a rich, decadent, meaty queso.

406 Walsh Street, West Austin; takeout orders can be placed online; there are indoor and outdoor dine-in areas; official website

The Cashew Queso at Local Foods

Yes, Virginia — there is a vegan queso that doesn’t suck. Houston-based cafe Local Foods has an Austin location, and it’s known for its vegan options, including a loaded, cashew-based queso topped with house-made vegan chorizo. “The nuts provide the richness that one craves from queso, but eliminates the need for using extra oils,” manager Martin Berson writes in an email.

However, another one of queso’s critical ingredients for success is familiar to fans of the dip. Berson says that, in the early years, the staff would roast the tomatoes, jalapeños, and onions themselves, but the flavors and colors weren’t quite right. After several rounds of experimentation, the chefs found that using actual Ro-Tel was the missing piece. “We make everything, except our breads, from scratch in our kitchens, so this provided a bit of a conundrum,” says Berson. “But ultimately, we decided that it’s really the thing that makes our queso true queso.” Anything to make the right queso.

454 West Second Street, Downtown; takeout and delivery orders can be placed online; there are indoor and outdoor dine-in areas; official website