The Room
Sammie's opened on South Lamar in 2023 — McGuire Moorman Hospitality's most architecturally-deliberate dining room since the original Vespaio in 1998. The room reads as a long-running New York-Italian neighbourhood institution dropped into Austin. Checker-tile floor. Brass-railed mahogany bar along the eastern wall. Red-leather banquettes. Tin ceiling. The visual language is the one Italian-American dining rooms have used for a hundred years, executed with the discipline of a McGuire Moorman build-out.
Larry McGuire and Tom Moorman have used the room to make an argument: that an Italian-American neighbourhood institution can be built from scratch in 2023 if the kitchen and the design are honest about the form. Eater Austin named Sammie's the best new restaurant of 2024. The Texas Monthly review held it at the top of the city's new-Italian rankings. The booking window has tightened accordingly.
The Food
The pasta programme is hand-rolled in the kitchen daily. The chicken Milanese, a paper-thin breaded chicken with arugula and lemon, is the menu's New York-Italian-American signature. The vodka rigatoni, the spaghetti with garlic and crab, the lasagne — all read as the canon of the form executed at the level the room insists on. The wood-fired Margherita is the pizza programme's foundation; the calzone is the staff favourite.
Wine programme runs Italian — Tuscan, Piedmontese, Sicilian — with a small natural-wine bench and an honest by-the-glass programme. Cocktail bench runs the McGuire Moorman house book: a working Negroni, a properly stirred Manhattan, a Champagne cocktail with a small lemon twist. Service is the McGuire Moorman group standard — warm and informed without being scripted.
Best Occasion Fit
Birthday: Birthdays at Sammie's are warm, family-style-led, mahogany-bar-friendly affairs that the room hosts with the practiced ease of a McGuire Moorman dining room. The corner red-leather banquette is the seat to request. The family-style menu for tables of six at $85 per person is the standard order for a birthday of six to ten.
First Date: The mahogany bar at Sammie's is one of South Lamar's most reliable first-date seats. The chicken Milanese shares well, the Negroni programme is the natural opener, and the room's New York-Italian register reads as warm without becoming theatrical.
Close a Deal: Sammie's is a South Lamar deal-dinner alternative for a working dinner that wants the room to read as Italian-American-classic rather than steakhouse. The booth tables along the eastern wall are the right register, the wine programme is the closer, and the family-style ordering scales naturally to a four- or six-top.