Chez Zee's Name Was a Budget Compromise, and It Still Anchors Balcones Drive

Chez Zee is four letters of leftovers and three letters of purchase. The restaurant's own history says Sharon Watkins kept "Chez" from the sign of a failed restaurant because her new company could not afford all new signage. She then bought "Zee" to finish the name. The sign at 5406 Balcones Drive is a cost-saving edit of a bankrupt chain's original.

That origin explains most of what the place has done since. It has been a long exercise in making a little go a long way, and the strip around it has kept growing while the original stayed put.

The creditor who took the keys

Chez Fred began as a small French bakery serving breakfast in the former home of Austin's first Dairy Queen at 2912 Guadalupe. According to the Austin Chronicle's profile of Watkins, restaurateurs Larry Foles, Guy Villavaso and Mickey Connolly bought it in the early 1980s and moved it off the Drag. They kept the French-bakery-meets-American-cafe idea and added lunch, dinner, luxurious desserts and cocktails. The chain then opened outlets in Westlake and Northwest Hills.

Watkins was on the marketing side of that growth. Her boutique ad agency, Wilson and Wilson, had been hired in 1983 to promote a struggling Chez Fred outlet in the Crossroads shopping center. Her campaigns helped the chain expand quickly through the early Eighties real estate boom.

When that boom ended, the chain contracted almost as fast. The Chronicle reports it filed for bankruptcy in 1986, and that Watkins's agency was one of its largest creditors. She closed the agency and bought what was left, a defunct restaurant still carrying the Chez Fred sign. The restaurant's own account dates the reopening as Chez Zee to 1989, which puts 2026 37 years after it reopened under that name.

The purchase came with debt. The Austin Chronicle quotes Watkins saying the first five years were really hard, "digging out from under the debt."

One meal doing the work of three

The Chronicle describes Chez Zee as Northwest Hills' go-to power breakfast spot for more than a decade. When the market changed, Watkins dropped daily breakfast and concentrated on Sunday brunch, built around dishes like the crème brûlée French toast. The article does not date that change.

What she did with the building next door is dated, and it shows the logic of the whole business.

Read in order, the pattern is plain. The restaurant gave up a daily meal and added a second building that hosts private events and takes brunch overflow.

The Chronicle ran that profile in 2014 and reported Watkins saying 2013 had been her best year, even though Chez Zee was not part of Austin's chef-driven new dining scene. She said she expected the restaurant to be around for another 25 years.

What the room still carries

The furnishings in the main dining room come from the same stretch of the story. The Chronicle reports that Watkins bought the red Gibson piano once played by Pinetop Perkins. It sits in the middle of the main dining room, and the restaurant's site says it provides live music Thursdays through Sundays. Rotating exhibits by local artists hang on the walls, and strands of white Christmas lights stay up year-round. The site also mentions a Big Chair painted by Austin artist Whistler.

None of these needed a new kitchen or a larger footprint. The restaurant's own history keeps coming back to these details. The piano is also a link to the Chez Fred era. The Chronicle says that when Watkins took over she kept as many cooks, bakers and servers as she could, offered live piano at night and hung local art in the dining rooms. She was building on habits the space already had.

The rest of Balcones Drive

Chez Zee sits among newer arrivals on Balcones Drive and nearby Hancock Drive.

• Chez Zee American Bistro, 5406 Balcones Drive. Opened under this name in 1989.
• Yamas Greek Kitchen + Bar, 5308 Balcones Drive. CBS Austin reported that the family-owned Greek restaurant officially opened to the public on Friday, June 23, 2023. It started with dinner service from 4 p.m. to midnight and announced plans to add weekend brunch and weekday lunch.
• Russell's Bakery & Coffee Bar, 3339 Hancock Drive. A short distance off Balcones.
• H-E-B at Hancock Center. The store finished a two-year renovation and held its grand reopening on February 20, 2026. Community Impact reported a 31,000-square-foot addition that brought the store to 125,000 square feet, with a Texas True BBQ restaurant among the new features.

Yamas opened in 2023 with a plan to grow into more meals. H-E-B added a barbecue counter to a store that first opened in 1964. Chez Zee shrank its schedule and grew its rooms.

Before you book

Listings for Chez Zee do not agree on every detail. Yelp's listing shows weekend brunch starting at 9 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays and a Sunday close at 3 p.m., with the week beginning on Tuesday. The restaurant's own site describes it as open seven nights a week. The restaurant's phone number, 512-454-2666, will settle both questions.

The same call answers whether the Gallery Room is open for overflow, and whether the red piano has a musician on the schedule that night.

If you know a Balcones Drive sign with a strange history, a regular table, or a story that never made the local papers, send it to Lillian Singh through Let's Connect.