November 17, 2012: Asia Cafe.

Posted on December 8, 2012 by dwightbrown

Asia Cafe
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‘s written about using mapo tofu as signaling behavior in a Chinese restaurant; no need to do that here, as it is a menu item. Likewise, if you’re looking for a plate of stir fried pork intestines with tofu, they’ve got you covered. (I don’t want to sound like I’m mocking them; it may be a perfectly fine dish, just not one you’re likely to see anywhere else in town.)
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.

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Nostalgia is a moron.

Posted on December 7, 2012 by dwightbrown

The Statesman reports that the Jorge’s on Hancock Drive is closing on December 22nd.

I feel kind of bad and sad about this. When I was a college student (the first time around), Jorge’s was a regular spot. You could get a good plate of enchiladas for an affordable price.

Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, though, it started going downhill. There was a bankruptcy, a sale, and one thing and another and…well…I haven’t been there for years. I think we may have done a dining conspiracy there at one time, but I can’t find any evidence of it (which means either it fell into the gap, or we ate there pre-1996).

Anyway, it sounds like they’re going to replace Jorge’s with a new TexMex place:

“It’s a great neighborhood, it’s a great property, and we wanted to keep it Austintatious,” Muntz said. “Jorge’s has been Austintatious, and we love that about Jorge’s. We want to support the neighborhood with another great Tex-Mex restaurant.”

I’m already skeptical. The new people seem to be more concerned with keeping “Austintatious”, “blending in with the neighborhood”, and hiring a prominent architect to redesign the place, than, you know, actually serving good food. Maybe I’m wrong, and I’m willing to give them a fair chance.

And what of the current owner and staff?

Veloz, meanwhile, will carry on the Jorge’s tradition as she teams with two of her longtime employees to start the new concepts. One will be a couple of small restaurants, Jorgitos, that would serve burritos and tacos and have a full bar, to keep Jorge’s loyal cantina following happy. The other will be several small-scale, higher-end Jorge’s restaurants that will serve a more specialized menu with Veloz’s recipes, with an even greater emphasis on the organic ingredients she now uses.

Not much of a fan of “high-end” TexMex, either, but I like the idea of a place where I can go to get some decent tacos that’s close to my home.

Posted in Closed, Mexican | Leave a comment

November 10, 2012: Red Lobster (Anderson Lane)

Posted on December 7, 2012 by dwightbrown

Red Lobster
Red Lobster.
109 West Anderson Lane.
(512) 451-6406
30.343884°N, 97.70589°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room: 2.5.

Dwight’s comments:

Lawrence likes crab. Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. Lawrence likes crab the way Deadpool likes tacos. And it was CrabFest. So we went.
I can’t say much beyond that. Every once in a while I get a craving for those biscuits and tell myself, “Hey, maybe it will be better this time!”. And every time it just seems mediocre and slightly disappointing.

Posted in Seafood | Leave a comment

November 3, 2012: New India Cuisine.

Posted on December 7, 2012 by dwightbrown


New India Cuisine.
2304 South Congress.
(512) 445-9727
30.239767°N, 97.75328°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room: 2.

Dwight’s comments:

I went in wanting to like New India. One of the owners used to run an excellent kolache place around the corner, and Austin can always use another good Indian restaurant.
And New India isn’t bad. The samosas were okay, but not as good as Taj Mahal or Bombay Bistro. The na’an was good. As for the goat biryani, it was…okay. The problem from my point of view wasn’t the goat, but just that I prefer Sarovar or Bombay Bistro’s biryani to New India’s. It may just be a personal preference, but there is is. Service was also quite good.
So there’s really nothing wrong with New India. I just can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for it, since it is off my usual beaten path. And even if it was, I’d probably try the south location of Bombay Bistro first. New India seems like one of those places I should like, but I just can’t work up a lot of excitement over.

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October 27, 2012: Bacon.

Posted on November 20, 2012 by dwightbrown


Bacon.
900 West 10th St.
(512) 322-9777
30.3274973°N, 97.75177°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 2.
Men’s room: 2.

Dwight’s comments:

This location has a somewhat storied history. For a long time, it was Basil’s, a well-regarded Italian restaurant. After that closed, it has gone through several iterations, including The Screaming Goat (the name was better than the food, which I thought was just okay).

Now we have Bacon, a shrine to things porcine. And I think this is probably the best use of the space yet.

To give you some idea of what things are like at Bacon: I’m used to being asked if I want bacon on my burger/sandwich/whatever. I am emphatically not used to being asked, as I was here, what kind of bacon I want. (When we were there, they had three choices: the house bacon, a hickory bacon, and a “Tabasco” bacon which we didn’t get to try.)

Honestly, the “hush piggies” didn’t quite work for me; they’re sort of like breaded and fried meatballs, but made with pulled pork instead of ground beef. I’m not unhappy that we tried them, but I don’t think I’d order them again if I went back; it may just be a personal thing, but I just didn’t really like them all that much. The bacon fries, on the other hand, were very good. Also delightful: the “Dublin Pulled Pork Sandy”, an open-faced pulled pork sandwich served on Texas toast.
I want to go back: I’d like to see what my mother thinks of the “Bacon Reuben”, and I want to try the breakfast tacos and chicken and waffles.

Posted in American, Barbecue, Burgers, Cheap Dining | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Recent closings of possible interest to some folks.

Posted on November 15, 2012 by dwightbrown
  • Berryhill Baja Grill, on 360 in that strip center near Trento. This was a place I liked; they had good pork tamales, fish tacos, and a pulled pork taco I was partial to. They’d been open for a fair while (we went there for lunch a few times back when I was working at The Other Place, so at least six years), and always seemed active. I’m not sure what happened, but my guess would be the landlord hiked the rent. No sign of them planning to reopen anywhere else.
  • By way of Rob Balon, Mesa Ranch has closed. We ate there about six years ago, and our review was decidedly more mixed than Mr. Balon’s. I haven’t been back since our meal there; I did think about it a few times, but just couldn’t justify it to myself.
  • Also closing after an ugly landlord dispute: Sagra. We ate there a little more recently, and I don’t think either of us were wild about it. (I am almost always sad to see a restaurant close, though, even if I wasn’t wild about it. It is rare that a closing fills me with joy, unless it is something like a Luby’s or some place that just made me angry.)
  • There have been reports that Trattoria Lisina is closed, but their website says they’re re-opening November 16th. We haven’t gone out there for an SDC, but I have eaten there; I like the food, but Lisina is way the heck out – farther out than the Salt Lick. When I’m out that way, I’m thinking barbecue, not Italian.
  • Finally, the Uncle Billy’s Brew & Cue out at the Oasis is mostly closed. (“It will re-open for the remaining dates on its music calendar, and for any private parties already booked.“) We never did an SDC at that Uncle Billy’s; we did do one at the original on Barton Springs, and I wasn’t impressed. The linked Examiner article discusses some of the issues and history with respect to that location and Soleil, the third restaurant in the Oasis complex. It’s probably been a year since the last time I was at the Oasis, and when I went, we ate…at the Oasis. The people I was with didn’t even think about either of the other two places; I suspect that’s at least part of the problem. (Also, as the Examiner points out: high overhead and drought.) (Hattip: Eater Austin.)
Posted in American, Barbecue, Closed, Italian, Mexican | Leave a comment

Hey, Oishi Sushi, You Know What I Hate?

Posted on November 13, 2012 by lawrenceperson

I hate a Flash-front in website that forces me to wait ten seconds while it draws mock-calligraphy before taking me to the main page, then has a menu page that won’t load because I don’t have the right crappy plugin. A menu shouldn’t require any plugins.

You fail at web design.

Posted in Gripes, Sushi | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Where to eat?

Posted on November 7, 2012 by dwightbrown

By way of the Statesman’s “Food Matters” column, I’ve learned of a new website that sounds kind of interesting: Let’s Eat ATX!

It seems like a simple, but good, idea. From the Statesman‘s description:

The website asks users whether they’ve eaten at a handful of local restaurants and whether they liked the restaurant or are interested in trying it. Then, users can submit other restaurants or cuisines they enjoy or any other details about what they are looking for, and Giller and her team of foodies “think about it with our human brain” and send a recommendation using all the information they’ve gathered.

I’d be willing to give this a try, but there’s one huge problem that makes the site totally useless for me: it requires you to sign in using Facebook. Since I refuse (for personal reasons) to set up a Facebook account, I can’t try it and give you a report. I would welcome comments from people who have tried it. And if anyone with Let’s Eat ATX is reading this: is the Facebook login requirement just a temporary thing? Have you considered other possibilities, like Google+? Or even just a normal login, not tied to any “social media” service?

Update: Site appears to be 404 as of June 2015. – LP]

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October 20, 2012: Café Blue (Hill Country Galleria).

Posted on November 3, 2012 by dwightbrown


Café Blue.
12921 Hill Country Blvd Suite D2-120, Bee Cave 78738 (Hill Country Galleria).
(512)366-5230
30.309895°N, 97.94278°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 1.
Men’s room: 3.

Dwight’s comments:

Café Blue does exactly what I want a fish house to do: serve very good seafood at a price that doesn’t blow a hole in my wallet. I’ve noted elsewhere that they do a good Oysters Rockafeller (their spelling, not mine). I’m also partial to the blue crab and crawfish fondue (which probably needs to be split among at least four people), and the Thai style mussels. If I didn’t think it would have embarrassed my fellow diners, I would have plunged my face into the mussel bowl and drank the broth. Ah, well, that’s what bread is made for.
I haven’t tried any of the salads here. I prefer, instead, to get a bowl of their clam chowder, which is among the best clam chowders I have had in Austin.
As for main courses, I like the crab stuffed flounder, which is exactly what it says it is. A baked flounder, stuffed with crab, served with a simple butter sauce. I’ve also had, and enjoyed, the redfish Louisiane, and I’ve heard good things about the “Kick Ass Sea Bass” and (of all things) the “Fork and Knife Steak Sandwich”. The “Lime Creek Pie” is also excellent for dessert.
They also do a Sunday brunch, and really, you have to like folks who put “Eggs Benedict Arnold” on the menu. (I’ve had them. No, they do not turn on your stomach and try to sell it to the British).
The service is friendly and responsive, and oddly enough, they’ve always seemed to have room without being empty every time I’ve been there.
This is one of the better places in the Galleria I’ve tried so far.

Posted in Seafood | Leave a comment

The 50 best restaurants in Austin?

Posted on October 29, 2012 by dwightbrown

A friend of the SDC (who shall remain nameless unless they want to out themselves in comments) sent along a link to Matthew Odam’s “Top 50 Restaurants” in the Statesman.

He also observed that every one of the places on my “Die in a Fire” list is on Odam’s list. To which I say, “Good for Odam”. Perhaps Vespaio treats Odam better than they treated me. (Though I doubt it, considering that they had a run-in with a previous Statesman critic.) Perhaps Odam doesn’t consider charging for iced tea refills in Texas a crime (in which case I’d question his credentials as a critic). Perhaps he likes waiting an hour to get a damn burger. Good for Odam.

For the record, I’ve eaten at 11 out of Odam’s 50. Not all of those were dining conspiracies, and a couple of places on Odam’s list I haven’t been to in several years. We’ve had discussions about eating at several other places on Odam’s list; we’ll probably do Congress and the Driskill Grill when we’re both feeling more flush than we are currently, for example.

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