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Austin
Austin, TX 78723 512-674-0446 |
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Cheap tacos at a Mexican meat market, what more can you ask for?
The taco fillings are pre-cooked and you just go up to the counter and choose what you want. Since the meat is pre-cooked, some times it is dried out. Also, you have to pay for your tacos at a register before you can go up to the counter and give them your order -- since this is a meat market/grocery store, sometimes the lines are long and you have to wait awhile just to get a couple of tacos. But seriously, the tacos are good, especially for the price. As a side note, this meat market is part of a larger chain of stores throughout the nation. They normally cater to the Mexican/Hispanic market, which is obvious as their menu has misspelled 'beans' as 'beens' and 'sauce' as 'sause', as pointed out on the pic below (click on the pic for a bigger image).
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Austin, Texas 78723 (512) 674-0446 |
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Another trip to La Michoacada Meat Market. This place is pretty good for cheap tacos. When you order your tacos, you have a choice among various fillings, but it's hard to tell what is what, so you end up ordering stuff by how it looks and by how you think it'll taste. This visit I got three tacos, one barbacoa, the other lengua (tongue) in some sort of spicy green sauce, and the other taco I don't know what was in it, but it looked tasty (I think it was pork, but I'm not exactly sure).
The only bad thing about this trip was that two different people were asking me and my buddy for money. I felt sorry for them, but I could have done without the harassment. |
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Austin, TX 78753 |
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I saw a billboard advertising Little Caesar's $5 'hot-and-ready' pizza and had to get one. Presumably, Little Caesar's has fresh pizzas around the clock (or store hours) already cooked and ready to be bought. So I got one of these pizzas, a medium pepperoni pizza (a medium cheese pizza is the only other option under this deal) and it was alright. It wasn't the best pizza, if only because Little Caesar's is mass producing these pizzas so they just try and pop them out as quick as possible and attention is lost to little details like making sure the cheese is evenly distributed and not clumped up in certain parts of the pizza and lacking in others. But, the pizza lasted me all day, and all for $5, so it's far from a bad deal.
These pizzas are so popular that people are willing to park in fire zones for the chance to pick them up. No kidding. As I was exiting the store (I wanted to write 'restaurant' instead of 'store', but Little Caesar's isn't really a restaurant, but it feels wrong to call it a store, so oh well...) a lady decided to park in a fire lane to get down real quick and presumably pick up some pizzas. I wanted to tell her that she couldn't do that, parking in a fire lane, but she knew exactly what she was doing and I didn't feel like getting into a public argument with someone who thinks she's above the law. Oh well, I should've gotten her license plate number and posted it on here, but I just wanted to get home and eat my pizza, I was hungry. |
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Austin, TX 78701 (512) 476-CITY |
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So Little City is a coffee shop in downtown Austin that also serves sandwiches, bagels, and other general things that most coffee shops sell, including beer. I went here for lunch in my continuing exploration of food options in the downtown area and decided to get a smoked salmon sandwich that included cucumber slices, pesto cream cheese, and greens on ciabatta bread for around $7 dollars before tax. It was a little bit pricier than I would have liked, but if you're eating at a downtown eatery, one won't find anything comparable for much less.
I'm kind of wishy-washy about ordering sandwiches from restaurants because I always feel that I'm over paying since I could conceivably make the same sandwich at home for much less, which is true if we're talking appropriate economy of scale, but normally when I decide to have sandwiches at home I buy all of this sandwich stuff that would cost less per sandwich if I were making like ten sandwiches, but normally I just make three or four sandwiches and then get tired of them, so overall I'm learning that in paying for sandwiches at restaurants I'm not really just throwing my money away. Also, I didn't really feel like I was wasting money because all of Little City's sandwiches are priced the same, so since smoked salmon normally costs more, I felt, in regards to the other sandwiches, that I was getting more bang for my buck by going for the salmon, which was delicious. Overall, this smoked salmon was delicious (as smoked salmon naturally is) and the sandwich it was part of was good as well. It also came with chips and salsa. However, I did feel like I should be getting more for my $7 than a sandwich, chips, and salsa, but I really don't know what I was expecting in the first place. Overall, not a bad place for the area. |
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Austin, Texas 78745 (512) 912-8702 |
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I started this website because I had a horrible experience at a Logan's Roadhouse, and in my #0 ( *Ground Zero*) review, I wrote such things as "Overall, I will never eat at a Logan's Roadhouse ever again." and "Shitty service and shitty food equals a bad review. No more Logan's for me, ever." Well, apparently, I lied as I just ate at a Logan's Roadhouse again, but it wasn't my choice as I was dragged there, kicking and screaming, for a graduation party.
This visit wasn't nearly as bad as my previous visit, but I can still say without a doubt that I will never choose to visit a Logan's Roadhouse again of my own volition. First, Logan's Roadhouse has complimentary peanuts, still in their shell, which you unshell, eat, and then throw the shells on the ground. I like free peanuts, but it's like Logan's Roadhouse wants to be known as that place where you can throw your peanut shells on the ground. It wouldn't be that hard to have trash cans strategically placed or bowls on the tables to throw your shells into. Second, I can't stand places where the entire wait staff makes a big ruckus and sings "Happy Birthday" or some analogous song to their guests -- that's just plain annoying. Third, they forgot my side order of macaroni and cheese. I had to remind them that I had ordered it, and I hate reminding people of stuff I ordered. Fourth, a girl in our party found a hair in her mashed potatoes. The waitress took the plate back and returned with a hair free plate, but my table-mates and I were left wondering what exactly did they do to the plate. Did they just remove the hair? Did they replace the mashed potatoes? Did they not replace the mashed potatoes thinking we would assume that they would replace the mashed potatoes? Fifth, they frakking charged me an extra 99 cents to have my baked potato "loaded", which is just corporate 'nickel-&-diming'. Seriously, who orders just a plain baked potato? If more than 25% of customers just ordered a plain baked potato, I'd be really really surprised. Seriously, just include the cost of a loaded baked potato in the menu price. Sixth, actually my food was pretty good, but it's kind of hard to mess up salmon. Finally, don't eat at Logan's Roadhouse, ever. |
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Austin, TX 78723 (512) 419-9030 |
| This Long John Silver's shares the same building with an A & W Restaurant which I had already reviewed, and it was in writing that review that I came across the problem of what to call the restaurant -- do I call it just 'A & W Restaurant', or 'A & W Restaurant / Long John Silver's'? I decided to just call it 'A & W Restaurant' since you can find it via the A & W Restaurant website. But this created an anomaly of two restaurants in one building -- how could I review the one and not the other? I rarely eat at Long John Silver's and can probably count all of the times I've ever been there in my lifetime on one hand. This visit, I got a combo platter with two pieces of fried fish, two hushpuppies, fries, a drink, with an additional 3 shrimp. It was alright, nothing groundbreaking. The extra 3 shrimp, at $1.19, wasn't really worth it, but the hushpuppies were good. They had some other menu items which peaked my interest but couldn't order because then I would have been ordering too much, items such as the lobster bites and crab cakes, but I don't know if I'll ever go back to try them out. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 835-9454 |
1/21/2009 1/24/2009 1/29/2009 |
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So I thought I had stumbled upon a great gift for my parents -- a $100 giftcard to Luby's. This was a great idea because: 1.) my parents like Luby's, and 2.) for every $25 in giftcards bought, Luby's gives you a $5 coupon (which I would keep). This was a win-win idea, awesome.
With the $100 giftcard purchased, I had four $5 coupons, $20 total, which would be good for two meals I figured. On my first visit I got one of their "LuAnn" platters, with baked fish, macaroni and cheese, and a baked potato, and a drink. It was good, especially the mac and cheese, which Luby's has always done well. What sucked was when I went up to the cashier's station to pay and was told that I couldn't use my coupons all at once. WTF!?! Actually, this probably makes good business sense and if I were a Luby's stockholder I'd be down with this idea. But I'm not a Luby's stockholder so I thought this sucked. But oh well, that just necessitated three more trips to Luby's to redeem all of my coupons. On my second trip I got fried liver and onions, fried okra, and more macaroni and cheese. I know a lot of people don't like liver, but I like it, although I've only ever had it at Luby's, so maybe there's bad liver out there that I'm just oblivious to. On my third trip I got roast beef, new potatoes, and even more macaroni and cheese. On my fourth and final trip I unknowing got exactly what I got on my first trip, baked fish, a baked potato, and yes, macaroni and cheese. The macaroni and cheese at Luby's is really good, yet they're inconsistent in that sometimes they put the macaroni in its own separate dish, and other times they just slop it down on the plate where it gets all over the other food. I got the exact same plate on the first and fourth visits -- on the first visit they put the mac and cheese in a dish, on the fourth they didn't. WTF? I could complain that I had to make four trips to Luby's to redeem all of my coupons, but the food was good so I don't mind, and I still think I got my money's worth, which is the most important part. The only thing that really sucked about these visits was that the cokes were $2.19, which I thought was a bit excessive and outrageous, or maybe they price them high so that people will elect to get water instead and be healthier, in which event, kudos to Luby's for trying to set health standards. Still sucks for us coke drinkers though. |
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First Visit
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Second Visit
Third Visit
Fourth Visit
Austin, TX 78704 (512) 445-0000 |
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Magnolia cafe is a little 24 hour cafe with pretty damn good food. The previous time I was here, prior to this most recent visit, I got the wasabi salmon. I figured "I like salmon, and I like wasabi," and I thought it would be a good combination -- it wasn't; it sucked. That was a few months ago, enough for the bitter taste to have dissipated from both my mouth and my opinion of the restaurant.
On this most recent of visits I tried their cornmeal dusted tilapia, with scalloped potatoes and veggies on the side. The tilapia was alright, if a bit bland. The vegetables were vegetables. But the scalloped potatoes were frakking amazing! The only scalloped potatoes I have ever had have been the variety that come out of a box, and I've always liked them, but man, having fresh home made scalloped potatoes of the quality Magnolia produced is just so much better -- they are so much better than the box kind that there really is no comparison between the two. The potatoes were thinly sliced and layered between layers of cheese, then topped off with more cheese -- I want to go back and just have a plate of them. (p.s. Magnolia's sign reads "Sorry, we're open" which I just think is stupid. Of course Magnolia is open 24 hours, which means they're open all of the time, and "Sorry, we're open" is a play on the "Sorry, we're closed" phrase, but why would they be sorry that they're open? It's just stupid.) |
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Austin, TX 78704 (512) 445-0000 |
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I ended up eating dinner at Magnolia Cafe on Thanksgiving eve because I had some family come into town and one of them had seen the restaurant featured on television and wanted to check it out. I don't dislike Magnolia Cafe, but I don't see what's so great about it, besides the fact that they try a little hard to have that 'Keep Austin Weird' vibe.
I ended up ordering some sort of Gorgonzola (cheese) pasta, which must be a seasonal dish as they don't have it listed on their online menu, and it was alright. It had shrimp, chunks of red bell pepper, and some sort of greens in it (spinach or collard if my memory recalls) and came with garlic bread, but I got bored of it quickly because it was just a costly bowl of pasta that didn't come with any side items -- there was really nothing to supplement it. Once again, I wasn't really that impressed with Magnolia. |
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Austin, TX 78704 (512) 445-0000 |
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So, the day after a rambunctious New Year's Eve, some friends and I decided to eat at Magnolia Cafe for our first meal of the new year. Generally, Magnolia is pretty good and well regarded in the Austin community, but this visit kind of sucked, not so much because of the food, but mainly for the way we were seated.
First of all, the food was alright. I had their #2 house special omelet (consisting of steamed mushroom, red onion, green bell pepper, ham and cheddar and jack cheese… oh, and egg too) with 'home fries' and an English muffin. I choose those sides because I didn't want toast (because it's boring when compared to an English muffin) or Spanish rice or fruit (because I'm pretty sure the fruit would have contained cantaloupe which for the life of me I can't force myself to like no matter how hard I try). Once upon a time I used to like home fries when I didn't have them all of the time, but now it seems like I'm eating them everywhere because more and more restaurants are serving them in their dishes because they are cheap and easy to make -- personally, I would have preferred the option to have hash browns. Overall, the food was good and plentiful... except that it became inedible after a few minutes because we were seated at the worst possible table at Magnolia on that particular day. Personally, I can't eat eggs once they cool down, something about the combination of the cold temperature and texture of the eggs just grosses me out, and half my meal became inedible because my omelet got cold. This visit to Magnolia sucked because of where we were seated. Magnolia is pretty popular, but it's a small restaurant -- add to the fact that we went on a holiday, New Year's Day, and one can imagine how busy and packed the restaurant must have been. I was in a party of five, one of whom put his name down with the hostess for a table; they asked whether we wanted indoor or outdoor seating or if either one was fine (meaning which ever one was available first we would get) -- we didn't care where we sat (or so we thought), so we said either one would be fine. Boy, were we wrong. When they called our name, we went up to the hostess's stand where they directed us through the inside of the restaurant, took us outside, through the outside dining area, and then took us outside the dining area to an outer outside area with some picnic tables, where they sat us at the table furthest from the restaurant. I'm not going to mince words -- this table sucked. First of all, when they asked us if we cared where we wanted to be seated, we didn't care, inside or outside, it didn't matter. Inside is great because it's temp-controlled and outside is good because it’s a patio area with plastic sheeting acting as wind blockers with strategically placed heat lamps keeping the area warm -- well, we were seated outside of this area with no plastic wind blockers and no heaters on New Year's Day, and even though we are in temperate Texas, it was still pretty fucking chilly with the wind chill only making things worse. The only reasons to sit outside were because we thought we would be on the patio with wind blockers and heated lamps, neither of which we were afforded at our table outside of the patio area. When we asked for a heat lamp, we were told that it would be a fire hazard because the lamps were tall and we were under a tent-like thing, which only served to cover the top of the table, not the sides. When we asked if we could switch tables (because our table really sucked), the magnolia staff told us that we had opted to sit inside or outside, whichever was first available, when we had given them our name and for them to reseat us now meant we would have had to wait all over again -- newsflash: we initially opted to sit inside or outside, not outside the protected and heated outside patio area. Overall, the food was alright, but the seating very much sucked. Now that I'm thinking and writing about the experience, I think the worst part of it was that the workers we were complaining to knew we were right, but were just saying "you all elected to sit outside so there's nothing we can do" as a lame defense, and to reiterate my point, yes, we elected to sit outside, but we did not elect to sit outside the outside. To add insult to injury, the waitress added her gratuity to our bill when we were just a party of five (I thought restaurants normally didn't add gratuity unless you had six or more people in the party at the least) -- I'm thinking she did this because she could tell from our complaining and discomfort that we weren't really in the tipping mood. To add more insult, the gratuity was 17%, where at most places its 15%. In sum, I generally like Magnolia's (which is why this review is getting a satisfactory rating instead of a sucks rating), and I know I'll probably be back in the future, but I'm definitely specifying where I will not sit the next time I put my name on the waiting list. P.S. There's a store next door that you can browse or buy from when waiting for your table (they have a p.a. system from Magnolia’s in the shop so that you can hear when your name is called). The shop is for tourists and filled with crap that no self-respecting person would fork over money for unless they're bored as hell waiting for their name to be called over at Magnolia. P.S.S. Horrible, horrible seating. |
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Austin, TX 78704 (512) 445-0000 |
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I keep on writing about my indifference towards Magnolia -- I don't really care for the restaurant much nor do I truly hate it, yet I keep coming back to it mainly because other people I know do like it, which resulted in this visit, which occurred after 2 am on a Saturday morning after a drunken bout on Sixth Street (the bar district in Austin).
Normally, I don't like to eat late at night or after I've been drinking because I just fall asleep shortly afterwards and buying/eating food during that time would just be a waste of resources, but my friends wanted to go to Magnolia and they were driving, so I went to Magnolia. To limit my cost I ordered a breakfast taco, their Big Breakfast Taco to be exact, which contains egg, avocado, bacon, and cheese in a flour tortilla. The taco was alright, but it was a pain to eat because it kept falling apart. Instead of packing the taco, the restaurant just placed the filling on half the tortilla and flipped over the other half. As I was eating the taco, the filling kept falling out and the flour tortilla kept tearing from the wetness of the egg and other fillings. Normally, tacos are meant to be a quick and efficient transportation method to get something into your mouth when done properly, which this wasn't. Once again, Magnolia was a bit of a disappointment, but I must be the only one to feel that way since the place was still packed from the late night crowd when we left at just after 3 am. |
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Austin, TX 78704 (512) 445-0000 |
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Once again I've found myself at Magnolia Cafe and once again I've had a lackluster experience. This time I ordered their #8 omelette, 'The Magnolia', which consists of avocado, tomato, black olives, cheddar and jack cheese, and lemon sour cream sauce, accompanied by home fries and an English muffin. For the most part the omelette was good, except for the fact that the ingredients were often clumped together and not spread out, so that as I progressed through the omelette I would hit a pocket of tomato, then a pocket of olives, and then a pocket of cheese, and so on -- I totally forgot the omelette came with avocado until I was midway through it and came across a pocket of avocado. I really wished the ingredients would have been more uniformly spread throughout the omlette, rather than just clumped together in different areas.
The omlette was passable, but the wait to get a table sucked. I was part of a party of five, and when we arrived at the restaurant there wasn't a long wait, but we ended up waiting a long time anyway as the restaurant could not get (or could not try to get) a table of five right away, so my party and I ended up waiting a long time as smaller parties that arrived after us continually passed us on by in the wait list. The wait was so long we contemplated buying some of the girl scout cookies that were being sold outside, but we resisted this temptation, at least until we had finished our meal. |
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Austin, TX 78759 (512) 243-8298 |
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So Maki is a new restaurant/fast food joint that opened up in the North Austin area that makes customized sushi rolls right in front of you, which I guess would be its main appeal. I heard about it on a forum and decided to check it out. As I entered the restaurant, which is in a strip mall, there is a backboard advertising their special rolls of the week or some-such which I wasn't really interested in so I just walked past it not remembering what the specials were (although I do remember the specials having a number of ingredients which I thought might be potential overkill). As you head towards the line they have poster-like things on the wall telling you how to order, which goes something like: pick your wrap (seaweed or soy), choose your meat (at various prices), and up to three other items (like veggies or cream cheese and I think they even had strawberry and mango as options). So, following their instructions, as I went up to the counter, I got seaweed for the wrap, salmon for my meat, and cucumber, avocado, and cream cheese for the other fillers. I watched as the lady helping me made my roll and after she cut it up into ten pieces, I had it topped off with sesame seeds (I believe they were toasted) -- I also had the option to have it topped with masago, but at an extra cost. Then, my sushi-roll-wrapper-lady asked if I wanted my roll topped with any of number of their sauces, and I was like, "no", because, at this early stage of my sushi eating life, I don't like any sauces on my sushi because I feel it interferes with the soy sauce (what I traditionally dip my sushi pieces in before they enter my mouth) that I love so much. The weird thing was that the lady was totally insistent that I try one of their sauces, which I didn't want to do -- the lady said that she could put some sauces on the side, which I didn't want; the lady said that she could put some sauces in a little container, which I still refused; then, when I sat down to eat my sushi, some other lady (or it might have been my sushi-roll-maker-lady, I really don't remember) comes up to me while I'm eating and asks if I wanted to try any of their sauces, which I had to nod 'no' to because my mouth was full.
Overall, the sushi there is decent (although I didn't care for their miso soup). I've been to Maki twice, and each time I ordered the same type of roll: seaweed wrap with salmon, cucumber, avocado, and cream cheese. The service was decent and the workers were very attentive (I say that the service was decent, rather than saying it was good, because the workers were overly polite, constantly trying to verify that I was having a pleasant time when I just wanted to be left alone). I think the staff was being very attentive to the customer's needs because they had just opened and were hoping to attract a following. On my first visit, I was one of just a few customers, but on my second visit they were more people, so I guess they're doing something right. The only thing that bothered me was the fact they were very adamant about me trying their sauces on both occasions, as if their sauces are what they want to separate them from other sushi places or something (because otherwise I don't know why they would be so insistent about their sauces). The funny thing is that I was prepared to hate Maki because my initial impression of it before I visited was that it was more of a fast food restaurant than the real, legitimate sushi places I am accustomed to frequenting. My initial impression of Maki still stands, but now I have a new perspective through which to view that impression (if that makes sense). As I was eating at Maki I realized that this is what sushi really is, fast food, and which is how it originally originated in Japan (or someplace, I think, maybe...). Then somehow, when sushi came to America, it became all expensive. So, growing up in America, I was instilled with the worldview (or America-view, I guess) that sushi restaurants were supposed to be high-class places, which is true from the American perspective, but wrong from the perspective of how sushi came to be, which was as fast food for the lower classes. So sushi is originally for the poor, but in America its for the not-poor, so my hateful pre-impression of Maki is true to my American upbringing, but false in the tradition of how sushi came to be, so if I look at Maki as being truthful to the sushi tradition (sushi as cheap fast food), then I should like Maki, which I do. Follow? Anyway, one of the cool things about Maki is that they have frequent customer cards which entitles someone to their 10th roll at Maki for free if they remember to get their card punched for nine previous rolls. The frequent customer card is a nice incentive to return, and given that they have rotating specials (or so I'm inclined to believe), I think I might turn into a regular customer to try all of their specials and learn what I've been missing in the world of sushi, as opposed to sticking only to my salmon and Philly rolls. |
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Austin, TX 78759 (512) 243-8298 |
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Back at Maki. This is my second review for this place, but I've been here more than that. Normally I've just stuck to ordering the same roll, salmon with cucumber, avocado, and cream cheese. This time I decided to mix it up and get one of their rolls that they have on special.
Stuck between a choice of either Lauren's combo, or Crystal's combo, I decided to go with the former, which has yellowtail, cucumber, carrots, avocado, sesame seeds, and spicy mayo (with miso soup and fountain drink thrown in); the latter hand salmon, asparagus, cucumber, cream cheese, and spicy mayo (also with soup and drink). Overall, the roll was good, but not really memorable. Better luck next time I guess. |
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Austin, Texas 78704 (512) 462-9333 |
| Matt's El Rancho is a Mex-Tex restaurant, with such menu items as 'frog legs' and 'guacamole enchiladas'. I really wanted to try the frog legs, as it's rare that I get a chance to try them, but the fear of wasting money on a plate I might not like led me to getting the 'guacamole enchiladas', which were just two enchiladas with a scoop of guacamole thrown on top, served with rice and beans. Now, I don't know if it was ignorance on my part or a lack of options on the restaurant's part, but my enchiladas came in Ranchero sauce, which is just a tomato-based almost-spaghetti-like sauce, which is okay, but not my preference, although that didn't stop me from eating my plate. |
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Austin, TX 78724-2415 |
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I might be a little bit biased, but I absolutely hate everything about McDonald's. Every time I eat their food I just feel so bad about my life and want to puke it back up. That said, I recently visited a McDonald's for breakfast. Normally for breakfast I just stop by a convenience store and pick up some freshly made breakfast tacos, but on this particular morning there was a weird confluence of multiple factors that led me to eating at McDonald's: 1.) the convenience store's taco stand was closed, 2.) for some strange reason I really wanted pancakes, and 3.) this McDonald's location was very conveniently located to where I was at that moment.
So I went to McDonald's, got 4 pancakes and a large orange juice, and had a decent breakfast. The orange juice tasted watered down, but the pancakes were all right (I guess it is pretty hard to f*ck up pancakes), and I still vow to never eat at a McDonald's again... until I eat there again. |
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Austin, TX 78723 (512) 452-7473? |
6/24/2008 6/27/2008 |
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I really despise McDonald's. I don't know what it is that I don't like about them, but for some reason McDonald's just has a poor connotation with me and always leaves a bad taste in my mouth, except when I eat there. I guess McDonald's has just become a symbol of corporate America and the depersonalization that has become the fast food industry. Greed and productivity over health and good eating. I try not to eat at McDonald's but sometimes get suckered in by their one dollar double cheeseburger, which is, all things considered, a great value. I am kind of pissed at the cosmic karma that has, by some stroke of fate, made this McDonald's review the fifthiest Public Restaurant Critic review, which is generally considered a milestone. Oh well. Something had to be review #50, why not McDonald's?
The only reason I'm reviewing McDonald's is because they started putting coupons for free Chicken burgers and biscuits in Amazon packages, which is cool, I'm always up for some free stuff. I had two coupons for free chicken burgers and another two for free chicken biscuits, all of which were set to expire at the end of June 2008. I managed to use three of them. The chicken burger was alright, but only because it was free. The burger was smaller than I had expected and I would have been pissed off if it had cost more than a dollar because you aren't getting much. The chicken biscuit was alright -- if I ever go to McDonald's for breakfast I could see myself getting one of these for the right price, but I don't plan on going to McDonald's anytime soon. On both weekdays when I went to go get the chicken burgers I went during the lunch rush and the restaurant was pretty busy and the staff was pretty inefficient. On my first visit, there were three cashiers taking orders and three lines of people waiting to order. I got in one line, but I choose the wrong line because my cashier was slow. The other lines went by pretty fast and started calling people over from my line to get their order, but they were calling people that were behind me, so people that arrived after me got their order taken sooner, which kind of made me tick. When I finally got to order, I ordered the free chicken burger along with dollar fries and a dollar drink. I ordered a small drink, but by some cosmic karma the cashier gave me a larger cup size, which was cool. I don't know if the cashier did this out of sympathy or incompetency, but I'm betting on the latter. Overall, McDonald's is okay, but if I never have to eat there again that would be fine by me. At least they don't have tips jars. P.S. On the bottom of my McDonald's paper bag I found instructions on the proper 'filling' or 'loading' of the bag. I didn't know that people would need instructions on how to put food in a bag (I thought common sense would've taken care of that), but I wonder what this says of corporate McDonald's view of their employees. |
Second Visit
Third Visit |
Austin, TX 78756 no phone number found |
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I went to a McDonald's recently, although I kind of hate McDonald's, but I had to get my vehicle's state inspection sticker and the guys at the automotive place said the wait would be 45 minutes to an hour (which actually ended up being 5 hours because the guys that work there are idiots), so I decided to walk around the area. I started getting hungry because I hadn't eaten anything at all that day, and lo and behold, there was a McDonald's right across the street (I don't know why I was surprised that there was a McDonald's right across the street since they seem to be everywhere). So I went to the McDonald's shortly before 10:30 in the morning only to find that they were still serving breakfast, so I had to wait 3 minutes for them to change the menus from breakfast to lunch to order a burger. I ordered from the value menu a double cheeseburger, small fries, and a small drink.
The food was alright, but like every other time I have eaten at a McDonald's I felt a little gross afterwards. I don't know why, but eating McDonald's always makes me feel a bit ashamed of myself afterwards, yet I keep going back because their double cheeseburgers are such a great value (in a calories per dollar perspective). The other thing I noticed about this McDonald's was that there were a lot of old people just hanging out. I guess McDonald's is the hip place to be on a Friday morning for the senior citizens. |
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Austin, TX 78750-3258 (512) 257-1411 |
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I normally go to Shilla Restaurant for sushi because 1.) I've been there a lot and I know what I am getting, 2.) they have good lunch specials, 3.) it's close to where I live, and 4.) it's never busy so I always get a table. I've tried to seek out other sushi restaurants, but for some reason I always seem to stick to Shilla as my default sushi place, mainly because of reasons 3 and 4. Recently I was finally able to eat at Midori (I had been there before, but not for their lunch specials), and I think it might become my new default sushi place.
I've read and heard about Midori's awesome lunch specials from local newspapers and online forums, but I had never had a chance to eat there during their lunch hours, but not for lack of trying. Twice I have visited Midori during their lunch hours, 11am-2:30pm, but they were always busy and the wait was too long, especially for someone eating alone like myself. But, not one to be deterred, on my third attempt to get good sushi at cheap prices I went to Midori during the tail end of their lunch rush -- I went around 2pm and was able to get a seat at the sushi bar with no wait. I got their 'L9. Sushi Combo B' which consists of '5 pieces of sushi, 8 pieces of tuna roll, and house special roll', in addition to miso soup and a house salad (which had some sort of citric/ginger dressing), all for $8.95. The food was pretty damn good and at a very good price. Now that I know that I can avoid the lunch rush, but still partake in the lunch specials, I think the people at Midori are going to be seeing a whole lot more of me. |
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Austin, TX 78750-3258 (512) 257-1411 |
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Man, I was so excited to go back to Midori after my last great eating experience there, but now, the next time I go there, it's going to be with a bit of hesitation and careful inspection of the menu. On this last trip, I didn't look at the menu close enough and accidentally ordered myself some sashimi.
I ordered the L13, which the menu calls "Sashimi Combo A" and describes as "6 pieces of sashimi, 8 pieces of salmon roll, and house special roll". I saw the "8 pieces of salmon roll" part, but must have glossed over the "6 pieces of sashimi" part as I meant to order something with the “raw fish over rice type of sushi”. I like sushi, but for some reason have never felt the need to try sashimi -- raw fish just by itself never appealed to me much. So I ordered sashimi by accident but decided to go with the flow and try it out and I discovered that I did not, in fact, as per my original hypothesis, like sashimi after all. They gave me two pieces of tuna, two pieces of salmon, and two pieces of what I assume was scallop, and I did not like them -- it was just too much raw fish in my mouth for me to enjoy. The sashimi was very cold, another aspect I did not like about my sashimi experience. I ended up having to eat a piece of my salmon roll, then stuff a piece of sashimi in my mouth to have something other than just sashimi in my mouth. I sorely missed the rice ball that goes under the raw fish in what we call sushi. I still like Midori despite my ineptitude I displayed on this visit. Overall, I don't think I'm going to be ordering any sashimi in the near future and I do believe that I'm going to be paying better attention to the menu the next time I frequent Midori. |
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Austin, TX 78750-3258 (512) 257-1411 |
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Phew! After my last visit (the one before this) I was a little afraid of returning to Midori -- I was afraid that I would accidentally order sashimi again. Luckily, this time I paid close attention to the menu and made definitely sure I would not have to relive my previous ordeal of having to eat raw fish just by itself with nothing else to accompany it.
This time I ordered the L12 which the menu describes as "5 pieces of sushi, 8 pieces of rainbow roll, and house special roll". It was good. One thing that confuses me when I get one of their sushi lunch specials is that they always include 3 pieces of the 'house special roll'. I don't exactly know what the house special roll contains, but I know it is fried and served topped with a sweet/spicy orange sauce. The problem for me is that I do not want the orange sauce to contaminate my soy sauce in its own little dish, so I can't dip those special roll pieces in the soy sauce. Also, I have to make sure that if I switch from eating a special roll piece to eating a piece of sushi not covered in the orange sauce, that the chop sticks are clear of any residual orange sauce, again to not contaminate the soy sauce. I think I may be over thinking this particular conundrum. Maybe I should not worry about the orange sauce and just let it contaminate everything – let the orange sauce get on everything. Or, I can eat the house special roll last so that I don't have to worry about contaminating the soy sauce for anything else, but I usually like to save the best sushi for last, which, for me, is not the house special roll. In the end, I guess I can just continue to eat the house special roll first, before I eat anything else on the plate, sans soy sauce. Oh well. |
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Austin, TX 78750-3258 (512) 257-1411 |
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I went again to Midori and ordered the same thing I usually order, the L12, consisting of 5 pieces of sushi, a rainbow row, some pieces of a house special roll, along with salad and miso soup. It was good as usual.
What was unusual about this visit was that my lunch mate and I decided to sit at the sushi bar, right in front of the sushi makers, one of whom decided to strike us up for a conversation. We chatted, but the guy was an older oriental dude and English wasn't his first language, so the conversation was kind of stunted. What was funny is that my lunch mate had his iPhone out checking the stock market and the sushi maker asked to see it, so my lunch mate gave it to him and the sushi maker spent a good few minutes checking it out while we were eating our sushi. The sushi guy was pretty cool, but I had never had that happen before. Anyway, Midori was good as usual. |
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Austin, TX 78705 (512) 474-1876 |
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Niki's Pizza is located in the Dobie Mall/Apartment Building right across the street from the University of Texas at Austin. They have ready-made pizza and calzones that you buy per slice/calzone, as well as pastas and salad. The pizza is pretty good -- it's New York style.
This visit I got 2 pepperoni pizza slices and a drink for $5. When you go up to order you can see what type of pizza they have available. When I went up, they had a fresh, uncut pepperoni pizza, and they had 3 leftover slices from a previous pizza. Guess which slices of pizza I got (hint: it wasn't from the fresh, uncut pizza). But, for some reason, the guy taking my order gave me the 3 remaining slices, when I had just ordered 2, so that rocked. |
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Austin, TX 78737 (512) 301-4648 |
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So, I went to Nutty Brown Cafe on an overcast Saturday morning after attending a Pagan 'Hand-holding' ceremony -- I'm not Pagan, but some friends of mine are, so I get to experience some aspects of that culture. I would tell you about the 'hand-holding' ceremony, but I can't because I missed all 15 minutes of it because I got lost for an hour and couldn't find the remote location in south Austin in the middle of nowhere that my friends had chosen for the occasion.
Also, the plan was originally for everybody to meet up at Waterloo Ice House afterwards for breakfast/brunch/lunch, but apparently there was a big UT Longhorn game that was going to be airing at the same time, and as the Waterloo Ice House is practically a sports bar, the establishment could not guarantee sitting for a party of pagans (and me) that would most likely have no interest in college football during probably one of the most important games of the season to date, so we essentially got kicked out of the Waterloo Ice House before we even had a chance to go there. So, since the ceremony was in the middle of nowhere, my friends found a restaurant also in the middle of nowhere that wasn't the Waterloo Ice House for us to meet at afterwards, which is how I ended up at the Nutty Brown Cafe, which was actually a pretty cool place, with a sizable stage area in the back (I assume a lot of bands play there because the walls were decorated with band posters and other promotional materials). The food was pretty good. We were a big party, but my table as a collective entity ordered some dips for appetizers including a spinach artichoke dip along with some queso plus guacamole and pico de gallo. For my entree I had the 'cedar valley smothered chicken', which their online menu describes as "our grilled chicken breast smothered with onions, peppers, avocado, bacon and monterey jack". The chicken was good, but I was a bit disappointed to find my chicken wasn't buried in avocado as the use of the word 'smothered' had led me to believe. As part of my entree I was eligible for two side items, from which I decided upon the fried okra (because it's not often that I eat at restaurants that actually serve fried okra) and the queso home fries (out of curiosity because I was not sure what this side item would entail -- imagine my surprise when I found that it consisted of fried potatoes in a bowl covered with liquid cheese; it was pretty awesome). The side items, like the main entree and appetizer dips beforehand, were pretty good. I like Nutty Brown. |
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Austin, TX 78704 (512) 440-0131 |
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Some friends and I decided to hit up an Olive Garden for lunch on a Sunday to get their all-you-can-eat soup, salad, and breadsticks. We debated if we should order entrees, because you get limitless breadsticks and salad (not sure about the soup) with a entree, which you can take home whole after filling up on the free breadsticks and salad, essentially getting two meals for one. I thought the entree option was a bit overkill, so I just went with the limitless soup, salad, and breadsticks.
The breadsticks: The breadsticks were breadsticks, not my favorite breadsticks ever, but they were decent. The salad: Olive Garden has possibly the best salad I've ever had from a restaurant. I love their salad dressing, to the point that I used to buy bottles of it years ago. (I'm not sure if they still sell it or not). The soup: I had two bowls of soup -- I really wanted to try all of their soups, but somehow I got prematurely stuffed. My first bowl was the 'Pasta e Fagioli' which has "white and red beans, ground beef, tomatoes and pasta in a savory broth". It was good. My second bowl was the 'Zuppa Toscana' which has "spicy sausage, russet potatoes and cavolo greens in a creamy broth": my lunch-mates really liked this soup and recommended it to me, but I wasn't that impressed with it. It wasn't creamy enough, it was too salty, and the skin of the potatoes were left on which for some reason annoyed me. Overall, it was a good meal, but be forewarned that if you go to an Oliver Garden on a Sunday afternoon there are going to be a lot of old people rocking their wheelchairs and strollers, at least that was what it was like on this visit. |
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Austin, TX 78723 (512) 302-9292 |
| As far as chain/franchise pizza places go, I think Papa Johns is one of the better ones. The pizzas are generally good and they give you a little thing of garlic as well as a little pepper. I decided to get a pizza because I had a coupon for a large one topping pizza for $6.99 (I got pepperoni). Cool thing about pizza is that if you don't eat it all, you can always save it for later. I think this pizza lasted me three meals. |
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Austin, TX 78751 (512) 382-3860 |
| I went to Pei Wei, an Asian diner, and it was alright. A lunch mate of mine got an order of crab wontons, which are pretty good. I really didn't know what I wanted to eat, so I got their Lo Mein noodles with chicken, consisting of, according to their online menu, "rice wine garlic sauce, scallion, onion, bean sprouts, shiitake mushroom, carrot, egg noodles". According to me, I got a bowl of noodles with stuff thrown in it for $6.75. The food was good I guess, but I just didn't feel I got my money's worth. |
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Austin, Texas 78705 phone: 512-469-WING |
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A friend of mine recently wanted to go out to eat at ‘Pluckers’, a place I really don’t care for, but I decided to go anyway. After the visit, I can affirm that I really really don’t care for it.
First, the ‘Pluckers’ we visited is the one next to the UT campus and, since my last visit, they have remodeled and moved locations by like 30 yards. The night we went, two guys from some radio station were broadcasting live from the restaurant…,and they were annoying. It was some UT sports radio program and they had the guys on speakers throughout the restaurant, talking about stuff I didn’t care for but was forced to listen to just because they were broadcast through the entire restaurant. Why anybody would want to broadcast a radio show from inside a restaurant or why a restaurant would want a radio show to be broadcast from their location is beyond me, but oh well, that’s strike one. Strike two happened when we got our food. I ordered a combo of 10 wings and waffle fries and my dinner-mate ordered a chicken sandwich, but he got chicken tenders or fingers or whatever snappy name ‘Pluckers’ calls them, but either way, they weren’t what he had ordered. When we alerted our waiter to this, we got strike three. Strike three – The waiter apologized for the mistake and gave us some queso and chips for free. But, as the waiter was taking away the chicken tenders, my dinner-mate asked him that if they were just going to throw the chicken tenders in the trash, why not just leave them for us on the table and not waste food. The waiter responded that the food was going to come out of his paycheck and that we was going to use the chicken tenders as his meal for the night (I guess they get a free or discounted meal every shift). My dinner-mate and I felt a little sorry for him that he was going to have to eat the food he erroneously served us, but there really was nothing we could do. I felt even more pity as I could see him in the back putting the chicken tenders in a to-go box for himself. It really was an awkward moment. Overall, I kind of hate ‘Pluckers’, especially this location. The food’s unhealthy and overpriced and the entire wait staff seems like they’re high on drugs – our waiter certainly seem to be high, as he was slow, un-attentive, and just generally space-y, not to mention that he couldn’t even get our order right, and we were just a party of two. For some reason, people seem to like ‘Pluckers’ and I don’ understand why. Every time I go there I end up feeling grossed out with myself coming out because it is so unhealthy, not to mention I also feel raped of my money because it is so over-priced. The sad part is that I want to say that I will never eat there again, but I would be lying. Eventually, I’ll be hanging out with friends and someone will want to go eat there and I’ll be dragged along. Oh well.
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Austin, TX 78758 512-533-WING (9464) |
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So I keep saying that I hate Pluckers yet I keep going back (actually, this was only my second visit to Pluckers in 2008), why? Because other people like Pluckers. I had family in town and they wanted to eat somewhere where they could also watch whatever college football games were big that day (this was on a Saturday), so we ended up going to Pluckers, which is known for having big screen tv's to screen all of the sports action on any given day (including probably at the end of the world).
So we went to Pluckers, it was packed with UT fans (I being in Austin and all), and everybody seemed to be yelling and in some sort of frenzied state whenever a big play was made or something -- it got to be rather annoying after a while. As for the food, I ended up ordering two flavors of wings, buffalo mild and lemon pepper. The buffalo wings were alright, not great or anything. The lemon pepper kind of sucked, they were all try and hard. I also ordered some jalapeno poppers as an appetizer, but didn't eat them as an appetizer because the dipshits that work there brought them with our entrees, making it physically and temporally impossible to eat the jalapeno poppers before our main course was brought to us. I know calling the people that work at Pluckers dipshits might be a broad generalization and probably isn't in good taste, but fuck it, this was my second visit to Pluckers in '08 and I've had questionable service on both occasions. Pluckers is 0-2 with me for '08, so calling the people that work at Pluckers dipshits is not a broad generalization, but rather a valid opinion based on my own empirical observations and experience. So what did I learn from this visit to Pluckers: Sports fans are such religious zealots they scare me in their blind devotion to something they have no control over (i.e., yelling louder at the tv won't make your favorite team play any better). The food at Pluckers is so overpriced I feel like I'm being raped while clogging my arteries -- it was almost like a double attempted suicide on my part, agreeing to eat there and all. Pluckers employees are dipshits. Oh, and about their jalapeno poppers... they were delicious. They were awesome, and they came with some sort of strawberry chutney sauce that was equally delightful. Overall, Pluckers sucks, but their awesome jalapeno poppers saved them from getting a 'Sucks' rating this time. |
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