Openings and closings.

Posted on September 20, 2012 by dwightbrown

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.
Posted in Cajun, Media, Vietnamese | Leave a comment

September 17, 2012: Hemingway Restaurant and Bar.

Posted on September 17, 2012 by dwightbrown


Hemingway Restaurant and Bar.
500 Cypress Creek Road #170 (Cedar Park, 78613)
(512) 219-6400
30.495745°N, 97.82236°W
WiFi: No.
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room rating: 2.5.

Dwight’s comments:

I wanted to like this place. And there’s a lot to like about it. The mostly wood decor is pleasant to look at, and makes the restaurant feel older than it actually is. I liked our waitress enough that I should have asked for her phone number. Our appetizers (especially the mussels and crab cakes) were very good. And the staff (including, but not limited to, our cute waitress) were very attentive.
Unfortunately, there were some early indications of problems. One of our party ordered soup, instead of salad, with his meal. No problem, right? You’d figure they’d bring it with the salad, right? Nope. When he asked about it, they gave him a kind of odd excuse (“We make the soup to order, so it takes a little longer.”) and then brought it out…with the meal…and brought him a bowl instead of the cup he asked for.
They did only charge him for the cup, but that wasn’t the only ordering screw-up. One of that other diner’s sides wound up on my plate. I ordered a baked potato, fully loaded with butter, sour cream, etc. and got one with just butter. I asked for sour cream and never got it.
And I ordered the “Beeves Galveston”, described as “Seared tenderloin topped with our own crawfish & shrimp whiskey pecan butter sauce”. When I think “tenderloin”, I think something that looks more like this. What I got was a rather undifferentiated mass of beef, with several medium-sized chunks of gristle in it. The sauce was okay, but I really felt let down by the dish.
I’d be willing to give them another shot, but if I did, I’d order a burger and see if it came out of the kitchen the way I wanted it. You fail that test, to restaurant purgatory you go.

Lawrence’s comments:

I liked my chicken fried steak a good bit better than Dwight liked his entree, and I thought the crab cake was a heck of a deal during the half-price appetizer window. The also kept my Diet Coke well refilled without asking.

My problem with the place is that it’s a bit more of a sports bar than I usually look for in a place to have dinner. And if I wanted a sports bar, there are nearer places than Cedar Park.

(Notice how manfully Dwight and I have  refrained from cheap Ernest Hemingway puns and jokes…)

Posted in American, Sports Bar | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Mangia Pizza.

Posted on September 13, 2012 by dwightbrown

Adding a link here cross-referencing this morning’s post at WCD on Mangia Pizza and the changes coming for the Mesa location (and the independently owned locations, which are now no longer Mangia).

Mangia is Lawrence’s top choice for pizza in Austin (the pre-Armadillocon pizza lunch is held there yearly). It used to be mine as well; recently, though, I’ve gone back to Milto’s deep dish Lone Star Special when I crave pizza. If you could combine Milto’s pizza with the parking lot of the Mesa Mangia, you’d really have something…

Posted in Pizza | Leave a comment

March 24, 2012: Chagos Caribbean Cuisine

Posted on March 24, 2012 by lawrenceperson

Chagos Caribbean Cuisine
7301 N Lamar Blvd.
Austin, Texas 78752
(512) 275-6013
http://www.chagos.biz/

This is a nice, cheap, hole-in-the-wall restaurant on a stretch (north Lamar between Airport and 183) that has traditionally been hostile to any restaurant not named “Kim Phung.” Although the plantano and yucca chips didn’t grab me, the chicken appetizer was sort of interesting, the salad wasn’t bad, and my Bistec Encebollado was reasonably tasty.

My Tres Leches cake was quite deliciously sweet but undersized. Service was attentive and personal, but they weren’t particularly busy.

If you live nearby, and are in the mood for something both cheap and not bland TexMex, Chagos is worth a try.

Posted in Caribbean, Cheap Dining | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Decmber 12, 2011: The Original New York Joe’s Pizza and Pasta

Posted on December 12, 2011 by lawrenceperson

The Original New York Joe’s Pizza and Pasta
9070 Research Blvd Ste 303
206-0555
http://joesitaliancuisine.com

Lawrence’s comments: This is a very solid Italian place. I thought the calamari and mushrooms were above average, while the pizza was pretty good and cheaper than average. I do think they’re a bit understaffed, as it was harder to get refills than it should have been.

Worth a try if you’re in the area.

Posted in Pizza | Leave a comment

October 10, 2011: French Quarter Grille

Posted on October 10, 2011 by lawrenceperson

French Quarter Grille
13000 N IH 35, Ste 600
(512) 832-9090

If there has been any dropoff since Dave Gore took over what used to be Mama
Roux until the  tragic and untimely deaths of Yoli and Michael Amr, it’s not readily apparent to the naked tongue. Pretty much all the food we had was excellent.

I started with a cup each of the crawfish gumbo and etoufee, and both were excellent. I also liked the crawfish beignets (which were really more like corn fritters) and even the fried green tomatoes, which isn’t something I would normally go for.

They even had a crawfish cheesecake as an appetizer. It was very interesting, and I’m glad I tried it, since I’ve never tasted anything quite like it. But, by the same measure, I doubt I’ll ever order it again.

My entree was Salmon Fish Ponchartrain, which lived up to the billing, very tasty and a nice serving size.

Service was constantly quick and attentive, and we got out in about an hour and a half (compared to three hours for me fellow diners at Trulucks two weeks before).

One difference between this and the previous incarnation: Even though we made reservations, it was still possible to get a table at 6 PM on a Saturday night. Take that as a hint, since French Quarter Grille deserves your support.

Posted in Cajun, Fine Dining | Leave a comment

May 28, 2011: Chang Thai Thai Cuisine (formerly Pad Thai Cuisine).

Posted on May 28, 2011 by dwightbrown


Chang Thai Thai Cuisine.
13000 N I-35 (just north of Parmer, in the same center as Wal-Mart).
491-6904
30.41153° N, 97.67578° W
Pepper grinder rating: 0
Men’s room rating: 2.

Dwight’s comments:


Honestly, I hated this place more than is justified by the food (which is pretty average.)
My hatred probably isn’t 100% rational, but I guess I feel like: when you’re serving tom kha soup, a dish that in my experience traditionally does not have tomato, your menu doesn’t mention tomato in the detailed ingredient list, you bring the soup out to the table, and it has big chunks of tomato swimming in it…that’s one.
When I order fried rice, your menu doesn’t specify tomato on the extensive ingredient list, you bring it out to the table, and it has big chunks of tomato in it…that’s two.
We don’t get to three.
Pass.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

January 10, 2009: Sagra Enoteca Trattoria.

Posted on January 10, 2009 by dwightbrown


Sagra Enoteca Trattoria.
1610 San Antonio St.
535-5988
30.27984° N, 97.74352° W
Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room rating: 2. (You go to all that
trouble to redecorate the place, and then leave a rusted, pitted waste bin in there?).
WiFi: Yes.

Dwight’s comments:

Small and kind of pricy. I liked my wild boar osso bucco at first, but
after a while the dish became sort of a chore to get through. I found
myself wishing I had ordered the scallop special, until the person who did said they thought it was skimpy.

I can see this as being a place I’d take a date to, but I’m more likely
to go back to Gypsy Italian Bistro instead.

Lawrence’s comments:

Sagra is obviously aiming to be an intimate, upscale Italian place near
downtown. And as such it’s more or less fine. But there are caveats.

First, the inside is pretty small; you have to be careful of bumping
into people behind you when you slide your chair back to get up.

Second, the food is decent, but what I had wasn’t good enough to justify the overhead. The best thing we had was the calamari, which very nice, with a light, crispy, well-seasoned batter. Unfortunately, as usual, it still didn’t dethrone reigning champ The Clay Pit. This is not an inconsiderable problem, given that the Clay Pit is all of two blocks away.

My entrèe was the Rigatoni alla Bolganese, which struck me as underflavored. The sausage I had on the side was much better, so you might opt for the Penne alla Arrabitta that contains it instead. For dessert I had the Gatto di Formaggio (read: fancy-ass cheesecake), which was…interesting. Not bad, but tarter than I expected. It’s probably a bad sign that I regretted not skipping that and stopping at the TCBY three blocks away instead. Service was a bit iffy at first, but got better as the meal progressed.

Third, there are the prices, with everything being just a bit more than you expect it to be. After the meal, there was that disheartening moment when all of us had put in what we figured we owed for the meal…only to discover that we were still considerably short of the total. There are a number of less expensive entrees on their extended menu; unfortunately, none of them actually seem to be available during the dinner hour.

Combined with the lack of any traditional “hearty” Italian entrees, I can’t really recommend Sagra over competing Italian offerings.

Posted in Closed, Italian | Leave a comment

January 6, 2007: The Veranda Restaurant & Bar.

Posted on January 6, 2007 by dwightbrown

2525 W. Anderson Ln., Ste. #260
300-2660
30.35596° N, 97.73332° W

Pepper grinder rating: 0.
Men’s room rating: 2.
WiFi: No.

Dwight’s comments:

The one nice thing I can say about The Veranda is that they did a good job of accomodating us. Of course, that wasn’t hard, since the restaurant was virtually empty.

It makes me sad to know that so much money and time and talent has been invested in a place that turns out such average food. Cajun blackened pork tenderloin: good idea. But the sauce wasn’t terribly spicy, and the pasta served with the dish was basically plain boiled bowtie pasta: there wasn’t any attempt at a pasta sauce (or enough sauce on the pork tenderloin to cover the pasta as well). The appetizers are reasonably priced, but I didn’t find any of the six we got particuarly interesting. Even the location is depressing: is there anything more pathetic than a dying mall?

Sad. Just sad.

Lawrence’s comments:

Questions, questions, questions. Dining at The Veranda leaves me so many questions.

  • How can you have so many things on the menu that sound so interesting, and have most of them taste so bland when they finally arrive?
  • Why were the only ones in the restaurant at one point on a Saturday night? (Wait, I guess the point above answers that.)
  • How can you advertize a dessert as a flambé, and then not bring it out flambé because you’re “not licensed” to do that?
  • Where do you go to get a flambé license anyway?
  • Where can I get the blooper reel for the flambé license final exams?
  • What is that smell in the bathroom?
  • What made you think this would be a successful restaurant site when a Hooters threw in the towel?
  • How do they stay in business, unless the mall is providing them free rent (entirely possible) or it’s a front for something else?

The (non-flaming) Bananas Foster dessert was nice, the calamari was good, the escargot were fairly cheap (but needed more garlic), and the fries were decent. However, none of the other appetizers stuck out, and my crab-stuffed-salmon was woefully under flavored; while not “off,” it was bland enough that I wondered how fresh it was. I can well believe other dishes might be more interesting, but I didn’t hear any reports of such from my many fellow dinners. (10 in total; a big crowd this time.)

Really, A. T. nailed it when he said that there was nothing here you couldn’t have whipped up better versions of at home.

Frankly, Northcross has been a Mall of the Living Dead for almost a decade. (Dwight and I have often joked that all they need was a Scotch Tape Boutique to complete the ambiance of pathetic desperation.) Even though I don’t generally shop at Wal-Mart (they seldom have what I want), unlike certain hippies, it couldn’t help but be an improvement on what’s there now, The Veranda included.

Posted in American, Closed | 1 Comment

June 24, 2006: Mesa Ranch.

Posted on June 24, 2006 by dwightbrown


8108 Mesa Drive
853-9480
30.37333° N, 97.75672° W
Pepper grinder rating: 3.
Men’s room rating: 2.
WiFi: No.

Dwight’s comments:

Things I liked:

  • the grilled quail I ordered on the side, which was the
    best quail I’ve had in town.
  • the bread.
  • the service.

Things I liked less:

  • the duck breast that comprised my main course. It was okay, but would have benefited from more of the “balsamic Chambord reduction” being applied.
  • the cinnamon-whipped sweet potatoes, which were a little runny for my taste.
  • the fried cactus.

Verdict: I’d give it a marginal thumbs-up. It isn’t a sure thing, like Mirabelle across the street, but it’s worth trying if you’d like something different.

Lawrence’s comments:

Mesa Ranch has a good concept going for it: A high end Southwestern steakhouse with lots of unique dishes. Unfortunately, the execution seemed to fall short of the concept.

Things started off well with a nice free bread basket. However, the appetizers were a bit disappointing. The batter on the fried cactus was quite nice, but the cactus itself was pretty much tasteless. (That may be the case with all cactus, no matter how you serve it, but if so, why bother?) I did not detect any bacon wrapped around the stuffed jalapenos, and both my venison chili and the venison quesadillas were disappointingly bland (and there was almost no detectable heat in the chili). The salad was good.

My entrée was equally mixed. The broiled bison strip (which I had with crabmeat Pontchartrain on top), though very flavorful, was marred by the unwelcome and unexpected presence of a tough strap of gristle along the side; if you need to cook it with the gristle to get the benefit of the fat lying aside it, fine, but this should have been cut off before being brought out. The “ranch fries” were lackluster. My broiled corn on the cob would have been quite good were it not for the fact that it came out cold.

This does not bespeak of a keen attention to detail.

Finally, my Tres Leches cake was good, but not quite up to the standard of other competing offerings from area restaurants. Service was generally very good, and they brought drink refills without my asking.

I don’t know what to tell you. I certainly would be willing to try Mesa Ranch again, but I honestly couldn’t recommend getting any of the particular items I ordered, especially not at these prices. I think more imagination and consistency is in order.

Posted in American, Closed, Steak | Tagged , | 1 Comment