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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 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
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Ever since my last, nightmare visit to Shilla Restaurant, which used to be my favorite and de facto restaurant for sushi, I've been on the look out for a new sushi restaurant with great lunch time specials. I've been going to Maki recently for most of my sushi fixes, but I don't really consider that a 'real' sushi restaurant, because it's not.
It was upon happenstance that I found myself at Ichiban on this occasion. I was driving around, hungry for something to eat, when I found myself on Burnet Road passing Ichiban by. I've passed it by before, but never hungry, yet it has always peaked my interest. This time, I decided to try it. As I parked, I noticed the parking lot was pretty empty (basically, there were only two other vehicles). As I walked in, I noticed that there was just one customer in the establishment, who was eating at the sushi counter. As I walked in, a hostess seated me at a table and gave me their menus, which had a lot of cool lunch specials. I really wanted sushi, and they had good sushi lunch specials, but they also had some intriguing lunch specials not strictly sushi, but I stuck to my guns and got sushi. I ordered their "LS1. Sushi Combination" which comes with "5 pieces of nigiri sushi of chef's choice, House Special roll, and 8 pieces of California roll" for $8.95 (I upgraded my California roll to a Philadelphia roll for two bucks more). All in all, the sushi was good and I was pleased with the place. The only thing that sucked was that the "House Special roll" was spicy salmon, which I don't particularly like because of the texture of the minced salmon, which is how most of the places I've been to have served it, but oh well, that didn't stop me from eating it. I really liked this place, and I knew it was a winner when I was exiting and walked across a bridge over a small pool of cool looking golden fish, which I hadn't even noticed on the way in. |
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Austin, TX 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
| This was my second visit to Ichiban and it did not disappoint. Like my last visit, I got their "LS1. Sushi Combination" which their website describes as having "5 pieces of nigiri sushi of chef’s choice, House Special Hand roll, and 8 pieces of California roll". For some reason, instead of the "House Special Hand roll", I got 4 pieces of what I assume was a spicy crab roll (which was pretty good considering I really don't like the spicy tuna or spicy salmon rolls). Also, I decided to upgrade my California roll to a Rainbow roll for an extra three bucks. Overall, I like Ichiban and I need to come back to try some of their non-sushi lunch specials, which all looked pretty appetizing on the menu. Also, the wait staff was pretty attentive, which kind of made it a challenge to snap photos with my camera phone. |
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Austin, TX 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
| For one of my last meals of 2009 I made my way to Ichiban Restaurant for their lunch specials. I keep telling myself that I'll start trying Ichiban's other lunch specials like their bento boxes or kitchen specials, but their sushi bar lunch specials keep calling me, especially their "LS1. Sushi Combination" which includes "5 pieces of nigiri sushi of chef’s choice, House Special Hand roll, and 8 pieces of California roll". I substituted the California roll for a spider roll for $2 extra because I was in the mood for some soft shell crab (see my 12/19/09 Maki review), and it was good, except the legs of the crab were a bit hard and weird in my mouth, but it was good overall. The "House Special Hand roll" turned out to be 4 pieces of what I assume is a spicy crab roll, which was also good. This visit was good. I keep telling myself that I'm going to try one of their non-sushi lunch specials every time I come here, but there's always next time. |
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Austin, TX 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
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Ichiban has become my new default sushi place and I like going there for their awesome lunch specials. On a Saturday night I was hanging out with some friends, we were gonna go eat burgers, then somehow during the car discussion over to Mighty Fine burgers someone brought up sushi and all of a sudden burgers didn't look that appetizing anymore, and so we went to go eat sushi instead. I have never been to Mighty Fine and I was looking forward to it, so I was a bit bummed on missing out on it, but that bum-ness didn't last for more than a millisecond as my thoughts turned to sushi.
So we went to Ichiban, we sat in a booth and had to take our shoes off. I always thought that to sit at an Ichiban booth you had to sit on the floor, but that was before my discovery this night that Ichiban's booths have a 'hole' so that you're actually sitting down... not on the floor (it's hard to describe this simple concept; there’s probably a word for what these seating arrangements are). Anyways... we all ordered different sushi rolls and cold, unfiltered sake and shared. I can't remember what all rolls we had, except for the Samurai, which I remember because it had ginger in the roll which I was not too big a fan of (I ordered a rainbow roll), but for the most part everything was pretty good. Ichiban has this thing where you can text "Coupon" to (512) 529-2622 to receive a coupon via text. I did this and the coupon I received read "Any size hot sake 50% off. Any special rolls 10% off. (Please show this to the server) exp 1/31/2010". I showed this to our waitress, a petite oriental who's first language was obviously not English; she didn't know what this electronic coupon meant and so had to take my phone to the manager to get his take on it, and she came back and told us that the coupon didn't apply to the sake we ordered (at this point of the meal we had already ordered and received our cold sake and had just ordered our sushi), but I was trying to ask if it applied to the special rolls we had ordered because it should have, but she didn't understand what I was saying and so we got no discount because I didn't feel like pursuing the matter further. Overall, I still like Ichiban, although it does become kind of expensive outside of the lunch hours. |
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Austin, TX 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
| Went to Ichiban again for their lunch special (I got a shrimp tempura roll ($2 extra) this time to spice things up (and the house special roll was spicy crab (not spicy tuna thank god))). |
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Austin, Tx 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
| In honor of President's Day, I decided to go get some sushi at Ichiban, my new favorite sushi place. I got the same lunch special I always get, California roll (which was substituted in favor of a shrimp tempura roll), 5 piece sushi, and some pieces of the house special roll, which this time was spicy crab, fried, and garnished with some spicy orange sauce. All of it was pretty damn tasty. |
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Austin, Tx 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
| Went to Ichiban again and got what I normally get, their sushi combination with 5 piece sushi, shrimp tempura roll, and "hand special roll". The only difference between this time and the last few is that the hand special roll this time appeared to be a fried crab and avocado roll, with two sauces over it, one black and the other orange -- it was good. I keep telling myself that I should and will try some of their other lunch specials, instead of continuously ordering sushi, just to see what I'm missing, but I think I'm bullshitting myself when I keep saying that. Why try anything else when I’m content with the sushi, right? |
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Austin, TX 78757 (512) 458-3700 |
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Went to Ichiban again and got the same thing that I always get, the sushi combination lunch special, with a shrimp tempura roll in place of the California roll. The meal was good, as usual. The special hand roll this time was four pieces of what I believe to be spicy crab, with avocado, fried, with two different sauces on top, one spicy (orange), the other sweet (black/brown).
Ichiban has their lunch specials from 11am to 2:30pm -- I usually elect to go during the later part of this period, in an effort to avoid the lunch crowd. On this visit, I was able to avoid the lunch crowd all together, during the latter part of my visit, when I was the restaurant's only customer, which was a bit weird. I normally don't like to be the focus of attention, but when you're the only customer in a restaurant, you're the focus. That being said, my waiter was really attentive, which was cool. Sometimes at Ichiban, the wait staff don't always notice an empty glass of water, but on this occasion, my waiter made sure I always had water, which was nice. |
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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 78751 (512) 458-6252 |
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I decided to go to Jack-in-the-Box for lunch today because a.) it was rainy, b.) I was tired of Wendy's, and c.) for some reason I was craving a big Texas cheeseburger. I've been to this Jack-in-the-Box location before, my last visit pissing me off.
Last time I was here I came for the express purpose of getting a $3.99 value meal which I had seen advertised on television. This value meal includes a burger that looks a lot like a Big Mac, fries, and a drink, and is available at participating locations. Last time I was at this restaurant I was there for the express purpose of getting this value meal, only to be told that this particular location was not a participating location. F*ck me. Oh well. This visit, I came with the express purpose of getting a big Texas cheeseburger and maybe a value fries or drink or something. But, lo and behold!, on this visit, but what do I see?? I see that they now offer the value meal I was looking for last time which they didn't offer at that time. So, I scrape my big Texas cheeseburger plans and order the value meal, and it was pretty good for four bucks. I felt I got my money's worth. This visit was a relatively decent, maybe good visit, except for one thing. I came during the lunch hour and it took FOREVER for anyone to come to the counter to take my order. I understand that the restaurant is busy during lunch, but come on, plan for that and have the appropriate staff on hand to handle the increased business during peak times. Eventually (emphasis on EVENTUALLY), my order was taken by a nice lady who apologized for the wait, and that was fine, but I was still annoyed by having to wait for like five minutes. To add insult to injury, the same lady came by cleaning tables and further apologized for the wait and explained that they were really busy. At this point, I was already eating my food and had forgotten about the wait, but then there she goes and reminds me again and it started annoying me. I tried to ignore her and make her go away, which she eventually did, and I felt a little bad for being so abrupt and non-responsive to her, but goddamnit, I just wanted to eat, not hold a conversation about the failings of Jack-in-the-Box during the lunch peak. |
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Austin, TX 78751 (512) 458-6252 |
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I went to Jack-in-the-Box for lunch and imagine my surprise when I walk in and look at their menu only to discover their $3.49 Jumbo Deal, which comes with a jumbo jack, two tacos, fries, and a drink. Needless to say, that's what I ordered.
This visit was a good visit, but I didn't think that it would turn out to be a good visit when I first arrived. When I walked in and went to the counter, no one was there and I had to wait a few minutes for an employee to take my order, which employee had been chatty with customers in the dining area for a bit before deciding to come and help me out. This annoyed me, but then the miraculous happen -- I discovered that this was one of the best fast food employees I've ever dealt with! I ordered the "Jumbo Deal", the dude asked if I wanted cheese on my jumbo jack, I asked how much extra it would be, he told me it would come to $4.21 with tax with the cheese; I was surprised he knew this figure off the top of his head, and I got cheese. Even when I got my order this employee was cheerful and all around helpful, making sure I was happy. Not what I was expecting when I first arrived at the restaurant and had to wait to order. BTW, the Jumbo Deal is a lot of food at a decent price -- I was happy. |
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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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