Paperboy Restaurant is located on the same East Austin site where the owners began their business, serving their incredible menu from a food truck to diners who sat outside at picnic tables. Those humble origins were the basis for many design elements of Paperboy’s first brick-and-mortar restaurant. The smoothly plastered massing of the building sits behind a permeable screen of custom, locally sourced terracotta breezeblock that encloses the ground-floor patio and extends up to become the guardrail of the rooftop deck.
A thin cantilevered steel awning protects the entrance and the pass-through window, a reference to Paperboy’s past food trailer service. Numerous planters are filled with herbs and native landscaping, and olive trees line the rooftop parapet, framed against a slatted cedar trellis. Inside, the kitchen and coffee/cocktail bar are visually accessible to diners across a terrazzo bartop that runs parallel with a custom white oak banquette, spanning the length of the interior dining room. Hemlock slatted wood ceiling covers the room, terminating at a curved rear wall of terracotta tile that wraps a large leather booth with hand-built white oak tables.
A large wood-framed window at the rear of the room looks out to the underside of the perforated steel stair and planting bed offering a layered view to the street beyond.