Local Man Wins Prestigious Award for Shockingly Not Putting Crypto in a Cocktail

In a shocking turn of events that has sent shockwaves through the Austin tech bro community, someone actually won an award for not putting blockchain in a cocktail. Arjav Ezekiel, co-owner of Birdie’s, took home the James Beard Foundation award for Outstanding Beverage Service Professional—proving that, yes, people still care about wine and not just whether their mezcal is NFT-backed.

Ezekiel, a seasoned sommelier with actual credentials (unlike your cousin’s crypto startup), has been slinging low-intervention wines like some kind of pre-IPO peasant. Meanwhile, the rest of Austin’s “disruptors” are busy trying to figure out how to put ChatGPT in a margarita. His crime? Offering hospitality instead of a QR code menu that crashes halfway through your order. Disgusting.

Birdie’s, the restaurant he runs with his wife, chef Tracy Malachek-Ezekiel, has been quietly serving gasp good food and wine without a single mention of “synergy” or “scaling.” They even recently switched to a prix fixe model—which, for those unfamiliar, is French for “we don’t care about your DoorDash habit.”

Ezekiel, who once lived as an undocumented worker before earning DACA protection, had the audacity to build a career in hospitality instead of pivoting to Web3 like a normal person. “I decided I would do the restaurant thing, and do it as hard as I could at the highest level,” he told the New York Times, clearly unaware that the highest level is actually tweeting at Elon Musk until he notices you.

While Austin’s VC-funded “food innovators” are busy reinventing the burrito as a subscription service, Ezekiel is out here collecting ports like a sommelier version of a Pokémon trainer. And he shares them. With customers. What’s next, free refills on empathy?

In related news, local tech entrepreneurs are now scrambling to rebrand their juice cleanse startups as “beverage service disruptors.” Stay tuned for the inevitable $20 million seed round.