Timeline: 1998–2026

Chef Alan Lazarus opens Vespaio at 1610 S. Congress Ave in October with partners Claude Benayoun and Scott Bolin. A beehive found walled into the building during demolition gives the restaurant its name. South Congress is not yet a destination; several investors think the location is a mistake.

Ryan Samson joins the kitchen in the spring, arriving from Tra Vigne in California's Napa Valley. Lazarus returns from a trip through Italy with a changed idea of what the restaurant should be. The food takes a visible step up from that autumn.

Enoteca Vespaio opens next door at 1612 — a casual daytime bistro with a bakery and antipasti case, a patio, and the lunch and brunch service the main dining room never wanted.

Vespaio settles into its role as the South Congress restaurant Austinites use for birthdays, anniversaries and taking visiting parents. Staff stay for a decade or more at a time. The kitchen becomes a recognised training ground for cooks who go on to open their own places.

After two decades, the founding partners sell both restaurants to chef Ryan Samson and former general manager Daniel Brooks, who also owns Licha's Cantina in East Austin. The handover completes at the start of 2019, on a lease running to 2035.

The pandemic forces the dining room shut. The lasagna becomes a takeout item. The restaurant survives a year that closes a great many others.

Enoteca's seventeen-year run ends. The space next door reopens as Chapulín Cantina, an Oaxacan-leaning Mexican restaurant from the same owners, with the room reworked rather than gutted.

Brooks and Samson open Vespa Rossa — 'red wasp' — in Dripping Springs in the summer, a casual Italian restaurant of pizza, salads and pasta. At the end of the year the building at 1610–1612 S. Congress is bought by Austin development group Fortum Ventures with a Colorado investment partner.

On 5 January the owners announce on Instagram that Vespaio and Chapulín Cantina will close on 28 February. The final eight weeks are packed with former staff and long-standing regulars. Vespaio serves its last dinner on Saturday 28 February, twenty-seven years after opening, as the second-longest-running restaurant on South Congress Avenue.