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Austin
Austin, TX 78750 (512) 335-0300 |
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I went to a Hoover's Cooking restaurant and it wasn't that bad. Hoover's Cooking bills itself as offering comfort food, which I guess it is, but my food was served a little too nicely for me to fully equate it with true comfort food (comfort food is supposed to be messy, not pretty).
I ordered a chicken fried chicken with mashed potatoes and a side salad, all of which was pretty good. Like I said earlier, the presentation was nice, but a little to clean for 'comfort food.' The restaurant gives you free bread rolls, which tasted like they were spiced with cinnamon and pumpkin, which I didn't particularly like but I could see how other people might like them. And the service was really great -- some of the best service I've had in a while. Really, the only bad aspect about Hoover's is that their drinks cost something like $2.20 for a soda, which I thought was a bit high. But overall, Hoover's Cooking didn't really impress me that much -- I guess it was just not my thing. |
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Austin, TX 78734 (512) 266-1369 |
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In celebration of Valentine's Day and our friends' 6th Wedding Anniversary, the four of us went out for a "fancy" dinner at Hudson's on the Bend on Lake Travis. Known for their "gamey" but tasty dishes, I think my favorite part was the receipt. We each shared our dishes a little bit with each other, so by the end of the night, I was able to say that I'd eaten duck, rattlesnake, trout, wild boar, shrimp, rabbit and elk. The rattlesnake, by the way, is excellent. It came sort of like a crab cake but even more delicious. My entree was spicy, crunchy trout, very ordinary, but very good! It came with a crunchy avocado and crunchy shrimp.
I have to say the service left something to be desired, especially for the cost. Our waiter was not that attentive, his bus boy did most of the work, we poured our own wine, and he almost forgot to ask us if we wanted another bottle (we had empty glasses, so of course we did). I also didn't like where they had us sit. We had reservations for dinner, and they sat us about three feet away from the hostess stand, so you really didn't feel like you were sitting anywhere special. |
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Austin, TX 78703 (512) 476-4852 |
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Hula Hut is an Austin restaurant that's more well known for being popular than for the food they serve, at least in my opinion. I don't know why people like Hula Hut except that it sits next to a lake, has indoor and outdoor seating (on a pier no less), and has bars inside and out serving high priced drinks. The food they serve isn't bad, but I don't think it's that good either (except for their pico de gallo or salsa or whatever it is that they serve with their chips, which I couldn't get enough of).
For my entree I ordered a 'halfpipe shrimp enchilada', which was just crazy big. It was huge -- it was ridicuously huge. It was served with Mexican rice and black beans. The food and service overall was decent, if average. Hula Hut isn't a bad place, but I just don't understand why everybody likes to eat there. |
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Austin, TX 78759 (512) 794-8778 |
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Some friends and I decided to go to the Iron Cactus to eat one night, a restaurant I had never been to before. As we pulled into the restaurant's parking lot we saw that it was full -- we couldn't find parking anywhere. The restaurant offers "complimentary" valet parking, but we didn't want to use it because it's not really "complimentary" because you have to tip the valet guy. But, since we couldn't find any parking on our own, we were left with no choice but to use the valet service.
My initial impression of the restaurant was that it looked 'shiny' and 'sleek', which I found to be at odds with their Mexican menu. I ordered the 'Acapulco', which has "one cheese enchilada topped with chili con carne, one soft fajita taco and one shredded chicken flauta, served with a small chili con queso and Mexican rice and beans." The food was alright, but it all came on one plate 'slopped' together, which is cool, as that's how I'm used to eating my Mexican food, but the presentation of the food seemed at odds with the nice decor of the restaurant. Also, I got the choice of chicken or beef for the soft fajita taco -- I choose chicken. When my party's order came out, for some reason they had put a beef taco on my plate, so they took my plate back and changed out the beef taco for a chicken taco, so everybody got their plates but me. The wait to get my plate back was relatively short, which means I don't think I got freshly cooked chicken. Oh well. At the end of the meal I had finished a little more than half my plate. The waitress asked if I wanted to take the rest home, to which my default response is always 'yes', so she took my plate to put it in a take home container. What surprised me was that she had separated the beans, rice, half a flauta, and half a cheese enchilada into their own separate corners of the container. I thought she was just going to throw it all together, which is what I would have done. I just found it kind of funny that they separate all the different food items in a take home container, but kind of just throw them all together when you first get your plate. Overall, the place looks nicer than their menu tastes. |
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Austin, TX 78724 (512) 928-8969 |
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I went to the Jack-in-the-Box off 290 East coming out of Austin, and I have to say that from all of the Jack-in-the-Boxes that I have been too, this is one of the better ones. Every time I come here, I get my burgers straight off the grill (in contrast, the Jack-in-the-Box off 41st has their burger patties precooked; you can tell the difference between freshly cooked burgers and burgers cooked before hand: the former are juicy, hot, and the cheese melts right in the burger, while the latter are lukewarm, a bit dry, and the cheese hasn’t even had a chance to warm up yet).
This visit I got the ultimate cheeseburger combo with the seasoned curly fries, and it was pretty good, but towards the end I did feel a bit gross shoving so many calories down my throat in one sitting. But overall, you get what you pay for. This Jack-in-the-Box is relatively quiet, with hardly more than a couple of people at the times I have visited. As I was wrapping up my meal, two girls came in and ordered combo meals, and again, I got a bit grossed out. The image of girls chowing down on Jack-in-the-Box somehow just disgusts me. If I were king of the world, I would ban girls from eating at Jack-in-the-Box.
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Austin, TX 78724 (512) 928-8969 |
| A return visit to the same Jack-in-the-Box reviewed here. This time, I ordered a Big Texas Cheeseburger, stuffed jalapenos, and a drink. The Big Texas Cheeseburger was good, the same of which can not be said for the stuffed jalapenos. I really like stuffed jalapenos when they are made right, but these weren't. The stuffed jalapenos had a hard crust, and the cheese-like filling was kind of oily and clumpy. As an aside, the stuffed jalapenos, upon close inspection, look a lot like asteroids, which could be useful if you are making a cheap science fiction film with do-it-yourself special effects. Bottom line: I will not be getting these stuffed jalapenos (to eat) again. |
The Asteroid-like Stuffed Jalapenos
The Guy Sitting Next to Me |
Austin, TX 78728 (512) 454-1980 |
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Jorge's is a Mexican restaurant. I had the 'Jorge's Deluxe', consisting "of a crispy quesadilla and a scoop of guacamole" for appetizer followed by "a traditional cheese enchilada, a beef taco, a pork tamale, beans and rice." It was all pretty good.
The appetizer was served first (of course) and I was a bit surprised by the restaurant's definition of a quesadilla. I normally except a quesadilla to be a flour tortilla half flipped over the other half with stuff in the middle, normally cheese, grilled. What I got at this restaurant was a (semi) flat, fried, hard tortilla shell, corn presumably, with queso poured on top. It was good, but not what I was expecting. What they served as a quesadilla looked more to me like a tostada than anything else. The other half of the appetizer was a scoop of guacamole served atop a tortilla chip. I like guacamole, but I didn't eat as my appetizer -- I saved it to heighten my main course. Overall, Jorge's is pretty good, once you know what you're getting. |
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