Asia Cafe.
8650 Spicewood Springs Rd #114A.
(512) 331-5788
30.432535°N, 97.77117°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room: 2.
Dwight’s comments:
Let me start off by stating that I liked Asia Cafe. However, I think you should be prepared for what you’re getting into, especially if you expect a typical Americanized “Chinese” restaurant.
First of all, there’s no table service; you grab a table and order at the counter.
Second of all, grabbing a table may be a problem: I get to the SDC pathologically early and managed to secure seating for us before the rush started. But on Saturday night between roughly 6 PM and 7:30 PM, the place was packed. To the gills. With a line stretching almost out the front door. When we got up to leave, there was someone hovering over our table waiting to take it almost before the last diner grabbed her purse off the chair.
This makes Asia Cafe also kind of chaotic. It is a normal sized restaurant, but it is packed to the gills and fairly loud. We were able to converse reasonably well at the table, but we had trouble hearing when they called our numbers for food. Asia Cafe has a PA system (which looks like a converted karaoke machine) but it didn’t work very well, and the runner from the kitchen was basically shouting numbers at the top of his lungs. I figure he’d probably blown out his vocal cords by the end of the night.
Third, many of those customers appear to be native Chinese. This is an example of my old joke, “How do you know a Chinese restaurant is good? All the Chinese truck drivers eat there.” Seriously, the idea that an ethnic restaurant is probably good if a lot of that nationality eats there shouldn’t come as a shock. It did seem like many of the people in line were regulars; I noticed several people had brought their own Tupperware for take-out orders.
Which leads to point number four: Asia Cafe is aggressively foreign. Tyler Cowan
I had a dish of pork with wood ear mushrooms, which I thought was perfectly fine. The wonton soup was quite good, and my egg roll was okay. But what really blew me away were the zhong dumplings, which are among the best Chinese dumplings I’ve ever had in Austin. A little while later I went back and had a meal of nothing but zhong dumplings and their pan-fried dumplings (which are also good).
Overall, Asia Cafe is good. And reasonably priced. Should you go? Are you adventurous? Are the other people in your party also open to adventure? (Even though they have traditional “Chinese” dishes on the menu, I’m not sure I’d take my mother here.) Is it a weekend night? For me, the place is just too frantic and packed on a Saturday night; I’d go again on a weekend, but it might take some persuading. On the other hand, I went the second time on a Tuesday night, and it was nowhere near as crowded.
I’m pretty sure I will be going back, and I think I even know what I want to order: zhong dumplings and mapo tofu. Maybe even two plates of zhong dumplings.