Mesa Rosa.
15515 FM 620
(512) 733-6622
30.3483877°N, 97.73474°W
WiFi: A WiFi network is advertised, but I was unable to connect to it when we were there.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room: 2.
Pretty generic TexMex. Not horrible, just average. If I’m in the area and craving TexMex, I might stop here. Then again, there’s also a Chuy’s not too far away…
Dickey’s Barbecue Pit.
5350 Burnet Rd
(512) 467-6653
30.327946°N, 97.73992°W
WiFi: Yes.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room: 2.
Strike one against Dickey’s: it is a chain, and not just a local chain.
Can good barbecue come out of a chain? Well, I thought the barbecue at Dickey’s was good, but not great. If I was hungry and found myself near a Dickey’s, I wouldn’t object to stopping there. But it just seems to me to be pretty average barbecue.
My major problem with this is particular Dickey’s was the service. Specifically, several members of our party had to go back and ask for items that were supposed to be included with their meals, but for some reason did not make it onto the plates.
In this area, I’d go across to Lamar and hit Stiles Switch over Dickey’s, if I had the time (and if Stiles Switch was open). Again, it isn’t bad; just average.
Eater has published their list of “The Year’s Most Scathing Restaurant Reviews“. Yes, Guy’s American Kitchen is on the list.
Also on the list: two Texas restaurants, Vida Sexy Tex-Mex in Houston and Kinado in Richardson.
The review of Vida is particularly interesting to me. I missed it the first time around, as I generally don’t read the Houston Press. But as I started reading it, I was saying to myself, “Hmmmm. This sounds a lot like a Houston version of Vivo.” (I thought Paul Petersen’s food was excellent when I ate at the Vivo on 620, but I was a little put off by the noise and the singles bar feel of the place. Petersen, as I understand it, has since left Vivo.)
Then I got a little further in:
“The restaurant was conceptualized as a Houston extension of Vivo…”
“But the deal with Vivo chef Paul Petersen fell through…”
And:
Dear Evie Melcher: Gordon Ramsey’s on line one, and Robert Irvine’s on line 2. Seriously, that has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read this year.
As for Kinado, wow.
Service: At best, lackadaisical and careless; at worst, unprofessional. Special requests are graciously acknowledged, then summarily disregarded.
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bacon.
900 West 10th St.
(512) 322-9777
30.3274973°N, 97.75177°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 2.
Men’s room: 2.
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.
