Where do folks get their news about restaurant openings and closings? Other, that is, than driving past some place and noticing a new banner or a “For Lease” sign?
The two major sources I use are:
- Rob Balon’s website. Balon used to be pretty good about this, but he hasn’t been doing as many updates recently. Especially the closings, which haven’t been updated since late August.
- The Statesman‘s “Relish Austin” blog. Much of the food writing in the Statesman these days makes me cranky, but they’ve been doing a pretty good job with the “Openings/Closings” entries.
What brings this to mind is an email from Lawrence yesterday stating that Hot Boiled at Parmer Lane and MoPoc closed. I confirmed this myself by the simple expedient of driving past it on my way home.
This is a shame. Hot Boiled was my favorite pho place in Austin. They had a simple and weird idea; a mix of Vietnamese and Louisiana cooking. You could get various types of fried seafood. You could get pho with crawfish and andouille sausage. You could get crawfish bun with andouille sausage, too. It was so good, I didn’t think it could last, but it stayed around longer than I thought it would.
Why did it close? I have a couple of theories:
- Hot soup can be kind of a hard sell in Austin, except during the two weeks out of the year when the temperature drops below 40 degrees. They did sell things other than pho, but that was their most prominent item. Personally, I really liked their pho, but I have to be in a very specific mood (one which usually involves sinus congestion) for me to even want pho to start with.
- I know I’m kind of contradicting myself here, but Austin is saturated with Vietnamese/pho places. (Austin is over-saturated with TexMex places.)
- Hot Boiled’s service was…well, pretty typical for a pho place. Especially one with only the owners working.
- Location? I don’t know what they were paying in rent, or how many tables they were doing a night, but I don’t think that center is cheap. And I suspect a lot of folks, faced with the choice of “Louisiana/Vietnamese fusion” or Panda Express (who should be sued for false advertising, as there is no dish with panda in it on the menu) a few doors down, went with the one their kids would eat.