Red Ash isn’t the type of place you casually visit. Maybe that’s because the steak menu is made up of 50-day dry-aged porterhouses, double-cut filets, and massive strip steaks. Or maybe it’s because the wait to get in has been many months long since they opened their doors in 2016. The dining room feels industrial, with concrete walls covered in graffiti, brushed metal railings, and hanging Edison bulbs illuminating the two-story space. It’s loud and busy, and there’s never more than a split second when you’ll see it at anything less than full capacity. Everybody’s here to celebrate—for some, anniversaries and birthdays, and others, that they finally got a table after 12 weeks of waiting. Start with roasted vine tomatoes and burrata before moving on to a wood-roasted bone marrow and wild mushroom risotto. Quickly recharge with a gem lettuce caesar salad before diving into their extensive menu of handmade pastas. There’s nothing subtle about the pastas here, but sometimes you just want to dig into a bowl of rich, savory braised-beef agnolotti with fresh truffles and roasted veal jus without thinking too much about it. Most of them are available as entrees or sides—we recommend grabbing a few side-sized orders so that you can try more. After all that, move on to a large steak for the table. The 30-50 days it spends aging adds some funk, but it’s balanced out by a few spoonfuls of roasted shallot butter over the top. A meal at Red Ash is often heavy-handed—expect lots of butter, garlic, bone marrow, and cheese in just about everything—but you come to Red Ash to mark a birthday, promotion, or successfully finishing a tube of ChapStick. It’s one of our favorite Italian restaurants in Austin, with classic flavors and decadent preparations. Just be ready to plan pretty far in advance.