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Austin
Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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A lot of people love sushi, and many of those people are sushi connoisseurs -- they can tell you about the various grades and subtleties of sushi, what constitutes good and bad sushi, etc.
I like sushi, a lot. I can’t be articulate about what separates good sushi from bad sushi, but I know I don’t like the sushi one finds at a supermarket and I love the sushi here at Shilla Restaurant. It’s cheap (relatively, for sushi) if you come during lunch hours, and the staff is friendly. It’s a Korean barbeque restaurant, but I only ever get the sushi. I only had one bad experience here, where I had ordered a rainbow roll, consisting of a California roll with 5 kinds of fish on top, and the cucumber wasn’t thinly sliced like I had come to expect from them.
But overall, I like this place, a lot.
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
| Another visit to Shilla Restaurant. Read the original review here. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
| I kinda eat here a lot. Read my original review here. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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I go to Shilla Restaurant quite often as I like their lunch special, SS5, which consists of a rainbow roll and 5 pieces of sashimi. Plus, the same lady usually waits on me, so generally I know that in addition to good sushi, I'm also going to get good service. This time, however, I was not waited on by the same lady as usual, and this time the service kind of sucked.
This time I was waited on by some guy, and he wasn't that great of a waiter. First, with every meal, the restaurant provides complementary miso soup, which they normally bring to you after they take your order -- not this time. This time, I had to ask for the miso soup, otherwise my waiter would never have brought it to me. Secondly, and most importantly the thing that most pissed me off, is that the waiter never came by to refill my water. Finally, the lady that normally waits on me came by to refill my water, but still, the waiter should have been more attentive. I really like this restaurant, and I know I'll be back soon, but man, the service just sucked on this visit. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
| Sushi! Read the original review here. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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Yup, I do eat here a lot.
Whenever I come here the same staff is always working, and it's always the same guy and woman that are attending the dining room (I think the restaurant is a family owned business). When I normally eat here the lady always sits me and takes my order and promptly brings me some miso soup. One time, the guy sat me and just kind of forgot about me. He didn't bring me any miso soup, which I had to ask him for. This time, the guy sat me again. And again, no miso soup. Luckily, the lady that normally sits me saw that I had no miso soup, so she brought me some, which was cool. Normally, the service here is pretty good, but not when the guy is taking care of you. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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I woke up today and knew immediately that I wanted sushi. My normal sushi place is Shilla Restaurant and I always get their SS5 lunch special, a 6 piece sushi with a dragon roll (California roll with 5 kinds of fish on top) which normally costs me $14 (including tip). I really should be saving money since I'm unemployed and blowing through my savings, but oh well (by the way, if anybody's interested, I will review restaurants for food if anybody's looking for a personal restaurant critic). I woke up knowing I wanted sushi and god damnit I was gonna have sushi.
The restaurant doesn't open till 11 am and I was there at 11:15 am -- I was also the only person there. I eat at this place a lot, but it was kind of eerie being the only customer, so much so that I contemplated walking out, but I was just too hungry. The sushi was good -- it really hit the spot and sedated my sushi desires for at least a week (hopefully -- sushi's expensive). By the time I had finished my meal two customers (not together) had come in. I really like this place and I hope they get enough business to stay open, but it was just really eerie being the only customer there for awhile, so eerie in fact that next time I think I just might bolt and come back later. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
| Sushi! |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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Ok, so it's been a while since I've been back to Shilla Restaurant. When I first found this restaurant, I thought it was awesome for its lunch specials and it started becoming my default place to go for sushi during the work week's lunch time hours. Then, I got a job in another part of town and I couldn't make it to the Shilla lunch specials and back within an hour, so I stopped going. Then I found another sushi place with lunch specials in the vicinity of my work and started going there, realizing that I didn't have the culinary tasting chops to differentiate the two different sushi places, so this new sushi place near my work became my default sushi lunch hour place of choice.
Recently, I got off of work early on a Friday and decided to check out my old sushi haunting ground, Shilla Restaurant. Normally when I go to Shilla, I go around 1, 1:30 to avoid the lunch crowd, and boy do I avoid them as there are hardly any customers when I normally used to go. I used to wonder if that was the norm for them, with so little customers, and if they would be able to stay open. This time, I went right at 12, and man, there were more customers that I was accustomed to. It wasn't packed, but it was busy. So I sat down and ordered what I normally order at Shilla, the SS5 lunch special consisting of a rainbow row and 5 pieces of sushi, with some miso soup thrown in for good measure. When I got my sushi, I was surprised to find, in addition to the sushi I ordered, I found two big pieces of a roll I had never previously had. The roll had salmon (cooked) and cream cheese inside, was fried with some sort of batter around it, and was drizzled with some sort of black sauce. I ate these rolls last because I didn't want the black sauce contaminating my little dish of soy sauce that I was using for the rest of my sushi, and I was surprised to find that these two extra roll pieces were actually pretty good (not that I had much doubt, salmon and cream cheese is pretty much always a win-win combination for me). The two pieces were also kind of big, it took me two bites to finish each piece. But, I was left pondering, why would they serve these two extra pieces when they didn't have too? Was it an attempt to create greater value for their customers and get them coming back? Were these pieces left over from another dish and they decided to give them to me instead of wasting them? Did they recognize my absence and give me these pieces to get me to come back every week like I used to? Sadly, I don't have the answer to these questions, but I do know that if my schedule permits me to come back for Shilla's lunch specials, there would be no hesitation on my part to do so. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
| Hey hey hey!!! It's another visit to Shilla (surprise surprise), not a bad way to close out 2008. |
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Austin, TX 78701 (512) 480-8341 |
| A standard bar-b-q place. Stubb's is known for their bar-b-q sauce, sold in local stores and on their website, as well as being a great music venue (I can attest to that), so, eating at their restaurant for the first time, I was expecting something unique or above average -- for the most part, I got neither. The food was okay. All in all, it's just another bar-b-q place. Although, I must admit, their onion rings frakking kicked ass. |
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Austin, TX 78722 (512) 323-9559 |
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I normally don't eat at Subway unless I get a great deal (or at least a good deal). The last time I had been to Subway was when I had a couple of 'buy one, get one' coupons -- I ended up visiting Subway four times within a week of each other.
My problem with Subway is that, first, it's just a sandwich, and if I am going to pay to buy a freshly made sandwich, there are plenty of other sandwich places much better than Subway where I can spend my money. Second, when a restaurant like Subway gives out 'buy one, get one' coupons, you can assume these restaurants are still making money, which, in turn, forces me to re-evaluate their products at a lesser value than I did before. For instance, with Subway's 'buy one, get one' coupons, I now know (or at least assume) that, without the coupon, I would have paid twice the amount for a sandwich (parts and labor included) than its worth to Subway. Therefore, for regularly priced sandwiches, at least half the money is not going to the ingredients or to the labor, but straight into the pockets of the franchise owners. Basically, in terms of food value, I am definitely not getting my money's worth. Essentially, now that I know that Subway can get away (financially) with giving out 'buy one, get one' coupons, I don't want to buy regularly priced sandwiches from them anymore. Anyway, now Subway has a promotion going on where all foot long subs are $5. I recently went to a nearby Subway and got one of the most expensive sandwiches they have, the roasted chicken breast, and got it with basically everything they could throw on there (minus green bell peppers and tomatoes, but including salt & pepper and parmesan cheese). It was pretty good, but I'll be damned if I'm ever paying full price for it. |
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Austin, TX 78759 (512) 323-0212 |
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Like I've said before, I used to kind of hate myself for going to sandwich places to eat because I've always felt that I could make the same sandwich for less at home. I had that train of thought up till Subway started introducing their five dollar sandwiches and all of the other chains followed suit. I recently went to a Subway and got their twelve inch roasted chicken breast sandwich for five dollars (which used to be one of their most expensive sandwiches -- the meatball sandwich used to be the cheapest, but I think they actually bumped that sandwich up to five dollars when they started the whole 'five dollar' promotion, so the people that are getting the meatball sandwich now are technically losing out on value, I think).
The sandwich was good. One thing that I always feel bad about is having the sandwich artist (euphuism for ‘sandwich maker’) put on all of the extra stuff I like, like the lettuce, onion, olives, pickles, salt and pepper, oil, and parmesan cheese -- I just keep listing on a seemingly never ending list of add-ons for them and I always get the feeling that they hate/resent me for that -- I can't say I really blame them, if I were them I would only want to make the simplest sandwiches myself. So, the sandwich was good, but the one thing that really peaked my interest in Subway again was their new Scrabble game. I'm a sucker for these type of 'collect them all' games (McDonald's, as much as I hate them, usually tends to get my business when they start doing their Monopoly game promotion). My first cognition of the Subway/Scrabble promotion was when I found a game piece on the wrapper of my sandwich. I pealed it off and found an 'h' for their online segment of the game and also fount an ‘instant win’ for a bag of chips, which was cool. When I got home, I created an online Scrabble/Subway account and was a little disappointed in the online segment of the game. I was hoping to start with a clear Scrabble board and be able to make words of my own choosing from the letters I would collect from Subway which would then give me a certain number of points in accordance with standard Scrabble rules, and then have those points translated into prizes -- that would have been cool. Instead, the online segment of the promotion has a pre-populated Scrabble board with letters missing -- you fill in the letters and receive prizes based on the word you complete, which is actually a bit boring in relation to what I thought the game should be. Oh well. Although I was a bit underwhelmed by the Scrabble promotion, I'll probably go back and try to get more game pieces. They had me at 'Scrabble'. |
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