Austin Roundup

Spend two weeks visiting any place for work and you'll end up hitting quite a few restaurants. This was absolutely the case on our trip back to Austin. Fortunately, it's a town I'm very familiar with, having lived there for more than a decade. Unfortunately, two weeks isn't enough time to hit all the old haunts.

I'll start with the places I should have gone, but didn't. Snow's BBQ. Chuy's. Banger's. Reale's. Maybe next time, guys.

I knocked out 5 more burgers on the 50 burgers challenge, bringing my total for the first month to 8. Not too shabby; at this rate I'll be done by.. um... carry the one.. divisor is.... hmm.. math is hard. June? July? That's about right. 8*6=56, so yeah. Just about 6 months. While in Austin, I hit Bar Louie (bad), Big Daddy's Burger Bar (awesome), Casino El Camino (awesome one week, then uncharacteristically bad the next), Twin Peaks (surprisingly good), and Hopdoddy (disappointing this time around). You can read more on those by searching nutsandboltons on the 50 burgers challenge site.

We also stopped by Plucker's, which is a perennial wings favorite. They seem to have finally achieved consistency in their Fire in the Hole sauce. Sadly, this means that the sauce always has large chunks of peppers and seeds in it, making it bitter and masking the other flavors. The saving grace was that the Hallelujah sauce is every bit as good as ever, and the waffle fries were still hot when they brought them out. Sometimes they aren't, and that makes all the difference. This time around, they were perfect.

Rudy's isn't the best BBQ around, but it is certainly the minimum bar, as I've discussed elsewhere. Their breakfast tacos, however, are the best in the world. I'll take a minute to 'splain why. I'm a bit of an oddity around Austin, which seems to be the breakfast taco capital of the world. See, when people talk about what Austin's famous for, they mention the music, and the college students, and the weirdness, and the pot-smoking nudist hippies. What they usually overlook (but shouldn't) is the fact that Austin serves more breakfast tacos every day than any other city in the world.* And you can get them damn near anywhere. Mexican joints, greasy spoons, gas stations, BBQ places, sushi joints,** you name it. Which brings me back to my point about being an oddity. 99.56%*** of the breakfast tacos you can get will have scrambled eggs in them. I don't like the combination of flour tortilla and egg. I don't usually like corn tortillas period. They're scientifically proven to taste like fear.*** If I have to have egg in my taco, I prefer it with a corn tortilla, but I'd really just rather skip the egg altogether, and that makes me abnormal in this town. This is why I love Rudy's. The best breakfast taco in the world can be assembled here. You have to wait in line at the counter; you can't just reach up under the heat lamps and grab one of the pre-made ones. The wait isn't long, but is totally worth it. As a matter of fact, the wait usually takes less time than I've wasted describing how long the wait isn't. Anyhoo... bespoke taco. No egg (they actually write that on the order ticket, which is actually the bag that's going to hold your tacos once they're done). Chopped beef. Potato. Cheddar cheese. Jalapeno. Bacon. Throw some extra sauce on there and you're ready to go. Forget Wheaties, real champions eat meat for breakfast. Had this a couple times while I was back, and I haven't had a heart attack yet, so it must be healthy!

* May not actually be true. This is an editorial site, after all...
** Ok, probably not that last one.
*** Now I'm just making stuff up.

The kids and I stopped at Verts Kebap up in Cedar Park (Volente area), which was very good. I can't get a doner like this in London since Piccolo in Covent Garden closed. I highly recommend them, especially since they're expanding like crazy. Last year at this time, they were operating out of a Smart car and maybe one brick-and-mortar. Their marketing chief was in the shop when we walked in, and he disclosed that they're planning on having at least 10 locations by the end of this year, if not closer to 20. Crazy good beef & lamb mix with fresh veggies and sauce wrapped up in a thick, grilled pita.

We spent the middle weekend of the trip up in Kingsland at a cabin we rent each year for friends and family, as a way to celebrate making it through another set of holidays. Culinary highlights from the weekend were fried turkey, streaky bacon, and stove top. On the way back, everybody met back up in Marble Falls at a Pizza Hut. Normally, I wouldn't mention this, but FFS the service was awesome in that place. You know how most fast food joints hire apathetic teenagers and don't really bother training them well? Not the case here. Everyone in the place kept busy and was absolutely focused on customer service. On top of that, the food was actually hot, fresh, and good. And we were eating buffet pizza and salad. I've eaten at expensive restaurants in much bigger cities that couldn't hold a candle to this place, establishments that thought they were big-time but in fact were just overcharging for crappy food and even worse service. Who knows what the situation will be in a year, but I'm actually looking forward to finding out. In the meantime, great job Marble Falls Pizza Hut. Keep up the good work.

We spent an evening with my brother and his family, as well as a couple of other friends, at Iguana Grill out by Lake Travis. I usually really like their food, but I ordered the enchiladas de mole and wasn't impressed. The chicken was a bit tough and hadn't been properly pulled or shredded, and the mole sauce was actually dry when it arrived. I'm not sure what happened, but I won't be trying that again. I still recommend this place, just order something else.

The Mexican food at Vivo off Manor Road was much better, and the margaritas are also fantastic. There's one in Cedar Park, too. I've been to both, and I haven't noticed a difference between the two, other than the decor. Service and food are both excellent. Keep in mind if you decide to give them a try: they are not kid-friendly. I think they're not technically allowed to ban kids, so you can take them with you, but it's really discouraged, and rightly so. The artwork on the walls is risque, to say the least, and it's more of a date night place, anyway.

Late one night, I was out with some friends at what had started as a happy hour. I hadn't eaten since lunch, so when 10 o'clock rolled around and the party broke up, two of us went in search of comestibles. It was a Thursday. I wouldn't have expected all the restaurants in Austin to close so early on a Thursday, especially so close to downtown. And when I say 'close to downtown,' I mean we were in downtown. It's odd, because Austin seems to be at the heart of the food truck movement. They're everywhere. For some reason, we just couldn't find one. We ended up trying out the Best Wurst, which is a sausage cart on 6th street. It wasn't great. The bun was ok, the brat was ok, but they put way too much mustard and sauerkraut on it. I couldn't finish it, and it's not because I didn't want to. It was just so messy that I couldn't keep it together all the way back to the apartment I was staying in.

On a related note, The Ginger Man pub on Lavaca near 3rd is still as excellent as ever, as is the Dig Pub up in Cedar Park. Beer selection at both places is top-notch, and the wait staff know their stuff.

We also went to FreeBirds World Burrito, if only to satisfy my curiosity that they're still the best in the business. All I'll say on that is: impression confirmed.

That's about all I have on Austin for this trip. Hopefully, I'll visit a few of those places I missed this time next time, so I'll have more to write about. Until next time, stay hungry, cuisinauts!

...actually, don't. Go eat something.