One of Austin’s great culinary characters and the maker of some of the best seafood tacos, po’boys and simple grilled fish plates this city has known has packed his knives and fittingly left for the Texas coast.
Ralph Gilmore has closed his Turf N’ Surf seafood window inside Lavaca Street Bar in downtown Austin and moved to Rockport, where he plans to open Hook House Kitchen.
One of Austin’s best seafood restaurants
With shaggy hair and an unkempt visage that made him look like a line cook pirate, Gilmore helped spark the food truck craze in Austin when he opened the original Turf N’ Surf trailer on the dusty lot that is now the site of the JW Marriott. The rust-bucket truck, with a surfboard bolted to the front, looked like the former motorcycle collector had dragged it straight from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to downtown Austin.
Gilmore won praise from the Austin American-Statesman and the public with his tacos, salads and po’boys made with fish sourced fresh from Gilmore’s friends on the coast…