Harold Marmulstein — a Culinary Institute of America graduate who cooked under Pano Karatassos in Atlanta and built the gastropub Salty Sow into an Austin fixture, twice cooking at the James Beard House — opened Restaurant François late in 2025 in the AMLI building of Downtown's Second Street District. With longtime restaurateurs Larry Foles and Guy Villavaso, he runs a French-American kitchen of classical technique: escargot under puff-pastry caps, wagyu short rib bourguignon, Lyonnaise salad, dry-aged steaks finished with sauces poured tableside, and Maine lobster Thermidor. The room reads like a 1930s supper club — globe lights, brass, white-jacketed service, an open kitchen — with the adjoining Bar Rouge named for Marmulstein's late wife, Judi. For an evening where the classics are the point and the room does the rest.