Hill Country’s Austin-Style Food Hall Barrels Into Downtown Brooklyn Today

Downtown Brooklyn is now home to Hill Country Food Park, a food hall inspired by the food trucks of Austin, Texas — all run by the team behind the popular barbecue restaurant Hill Country.

Debuting Monday, November 26, the indoor food “park” is modeled after food truck parks that owners Marc Glosserman and Kristen Glosserman routinely visit in Austin, where people eat on outdoor picnic tables under hanging lights. The duo, though known for creating Hill Country’s barbecue and fried chicken restaurants, go beyond that at the Brooklyn market, serving coffee, tacos, pizza, and other fare pulled from the Texas capital.

Hill Country Food Park is located at 345 Adams St., where the Glossermans previously operated their fried chicken and barbecue restaurants. “It was a very big space for barbecue,” Marc says. Neither performed as well as expected, prompting closures last year. But the Glossermans liked the space and the neighborhood, so they went back to the drawing board.

What they came up with was a food park — a smaller version of a food hall with six different stalls, including an all-day coffee stand serving doughnuts and ice cream; a Tex-Mex taco stand; a salad and sandwich shop; and a pizza stall where pies come with barbecue toppings. Hill Country’s barbecue and fried chicken restaurants also make a comeback in two separate stalls within the market. (See a full list of food stalls below.)

“We had fans who loved what we were doing here, so it was very important not to take that away. So we knew that whatever we did, we had to have fried chicken and barbecue,” Kristin says. “But we wanted to make it more accessible — to offer something that would draw people in multiple times a week.”

Culinary director Ash Fulk is overseeing menu creation at all the stands but one. The coffee counter will be run by local businesses, including City of Saints Coffee Roasters, King David Tacos, Du’s Donuts & Coffee, and Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. It will serve breakfast tacos in the morning and will swap later in the day.

Inside, food stalls surround an open dining area with long wooden tables canopied by string lights, meant to inspire an outdoorsy feel. Upstairs, a new iteration of Boerum Hill dive bar Hank’s Saloon will open next year, live honky-tonk music included. (The bar’s original location is set to close at the end of the year.)

The Glossermans have been building a local reputation for barbecue since 2007, when they opened their first Hill Country restaurant in Manhattan. They now run one in Flatiron and another in Washington D.C.

Many ideas for the food park came from recent “research pilgrimage trips” the Hill Country team would take in Texas — specifically the time Marc and Fulk ate at over 30 restaurants in 48 hours. But besides that, the stalls have a tinge of the husband-and-wife duo’s lives. Austino’s, the pizza stall, is named after Marc and Kristen’s son, Austin, whose Italian grandfather nicknamed him Austino; and the Tex-Mex stand is named after Marc’s longtime friend, Nickie, who used to donate treys of tamales to school cafeterias in Texas. It’s a personal project for Marc, who grew up in Central Texas.

“I’ve always dreamed of doing the Texas version of Eataly,” he says.

Hill Country Food Park is now open, and will its hours are from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

The following food stalls live inside Hill Country Food Park:

• South Congress: Coffee by local roasters City of Saints; breakfast tacos by Austin-style breakfast taco cart, King David Tacos; doughnuts from Du’s Donuts; and ice cream from Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. The stall was named after a popular shopping strip in Austin.

See ice cream menu here and the coffee menu here.

• Nickie’s: “Mex-Tex” fare like tamales; the “El Guapo Burger” made with a brisket-short rib blend; and tacos. Drinks will include margaritas.

See full menu here.

• Bluebonnets: Salads and light sandwiches like the “Reba,” a hot-pressed ciabatta stuffed with mozzarella, portobello mushroom, roasted red peppers, arugula, pecan pesto, and olive spread. The stall is named after the state flower of Texas, and everything on the menu is a nod to female country artists.

See full menu here.

• Austino’s: Pizza like “El Original” topped with brisket, mozzarella, green onion, pickles, and jalapenos; and the “Skye Pie” with kreuz sausage, cippolini onion, roasted red peppers, mozzarella, and red sauce.

See full menu here.

• Hill Country Barbecue Market: Texas-style barbecue with brisket sold by the pound or on sandwiches; Kreuz Market sausages, house-smoked chicken wings, and baby-back ribs, a new addition.

See full menu here.

• Hill Country Chicken: Bone-in fried chicken; big Texas tenders; spicy “Wickedwich” topped with pepper jack cheese; and the original “Chickwich” with Hill Country’s popular sour pickles.

See full menu here.

Hill Country Food Park

345 Adams St., Brooklyn, NY 11201