Meal of Food Austin

I went to Austin for a conference for work last week, and it seemed like the perfect excuse for Ryan and I to enjoy a weekend trip visiting friends and all of our favorite Austin places. We are both University of Texas grads and we met in school, so Austin is pretty special to us.

One of the best things about Austin is the amazing food scene. Since we missed our traditional MoFF, I decided to share some of the best spots that we visited on our trip.

Ryan drove down on Friday morning in time to pick me up at the end of my conference. We went straight to Trudy's for lunch. Trudy's is a local chain of tex-mex restaurants that is famous for great Mexican martinis, and it's been one of our favorites for years. There is a location within walking distance of the UT campus, so it was a place that we went often when we were in school. We started out with chips and queso and a martini. A Mexican martini is essentially a variation of a giant margarita on the rocks. The ones at Trudy's are pretty intense - so much so that you are only aloud to order two. I must admit, one is more than enough for me!

Delicious!

We both decided to order the house special for lunch. It's called the stuffed avocado, and it is an avocado, cheese, and chicken mixture that is fried and smothered in suiza sauce. The waiter convinced us to step it up a notch and add seasoned brisket to the top. It was excellent! I've eaten at Trudy's several times, but had never tried the stuffed avocado. It was so good, that I don't think I'll ever order anything else!

It may look like a mess, but I promise it's good!

For breakfast the next morning, we ventured out to another old favorite, Taco Shack. They have amazing breakfast burritos. My personal favorite is called The Burnet Road, which is a tortilla stuffed with eggs, cheese, potatoes, and bacon. And it was just as tasty as I remember!

Is there a better breakfast than a breakfast taco/burrito? I think not.

Before we left Sunday, we met a couple of friends for brunch at Kerbey Lane Cafe, another favorite of UT students. Kerbey is famous for queso, pancakes, and for being open 24 hours. Kerbey queso is perhaps my most favorite queso in the world. It's white cheese, guacamole, tomatoes, etc. and it's pretty great. We were there for breakfast, but we couldn't pass up the queso!

Nothing like a bowl of cheese to start your day!

We had omelets and apple whole wheat pancakes for our meal. The omelet was good, but the pancakes were better. They are huge! Kerbey sells their pancake mix, so we stopped by the H-E-B and picked some up (along with some Whataburger ketchup!)

We brought back gifts!

Our weekend in Austin was a lot of fun! It's great to be able to see friends and to visit some of our favorite places. Here are a couple of other places that I hit while I was in town - I'd recommend them all!

- Rudy's BBQ - super casual and super delicious! Each location is attached to a gas station convenience store. There are a few locations in DFW as well.

- Serrano's - another tex-mex spot with great margaritas. I had quesadillas and they were great, and you get a huge portion.

- Esther's Follies - this is not a restaurant - it's a comedy club that I had the chance to visit with the conference that I was attending. It's very funny and a great activity if you are looking for something to do while visiting Austin.

- Stubb's BBQ - somehow, neither Ryan or I ever ate at Stubbs while living in Austin, despite the fact that Ryan only buys Stubb's BBQ sauce at the grocery story. It's also a cool concert venue.

What's your favorite Austin spot?

Taste of Addison

We did something totally different from our usual Meal Of Food this week and went to the annual Taste of Addison festival. Taste of Addison features over 60 restaurants selling samples of their food, live music, and general festivities. Also, several booths sold 16oz beers (mostly Dos XX which was the event sponsor) for only $3.00. Pretty good for an event like this one!

Thanks to MoFF, I had actually already tried food from many of the participating restaurants. In the spirit of Meal of Food Friday, Ryan and I tried something new and started out by sharing snacks from Taste of Cuba. We shared the Cuban sandwich, fried potato ball, and a beef empanada. The sandwich was really good. The other two items were just okay. It's a little hard to judge the restaurant when you are getting food in the festival setting, but the empanada really didn't do it for me. Maybe just because I've had much better - if you like empanadas, you have to check out Casa Vieja. The potato ball was mashed potatoes with seasoned meat inside. It would have been better it if had been really hot - it was a little cold, which really took it down a notch.

Cuban sandwich - it was easily the highlight of the meal

The empanada was fine - just didn't measure up to Casa Vieja

How can you NOT order something called a fried potato ball?

Our second course was a slice of pizza from Johnny's Pizza House. My pizza was good, but it was also a little cold. I can see this being much better at the actual restaurant. The Johnny's booth had the additional advantage of offering a nice selection of beers. Ryan tried the St. Arnold's Lawnmower, and we both liked it so much that we bought some on Saturday for another event.

pizza was a good choice for a festival - no fork needed!

For desert, we got chocolate chip cookies and a brownie from Tiff's Treats, an amazing cookie delivery service that was founded in Austin, TX by a couple of UT students. Naturally, we had to support our fellow Longhorns!

We had a really fun night, enjoying food, music, and friends.  I highly recommend checking out Taste of Addison next spring. Here are some tips if you do:

1. Buy reduced price admission tickets at Albertson's
2. Do not pay for parking - free parking is available near the Addison Circle Fair Grounds
3. Bring cash - there are ATMs, but you might as well come prepared
4. Share food with friends so that you can try more things - that's the point!

Ziziki's Restaurant

The last few months have been so busy! School, work, family - it has been a little crazy. I missed the last two MoFFs due to my grandma's 80th birthday celebration and my brother in law's wedding rehearsal. Both were lots of fun, but I was glad that we got to go to a regular Meal of Food Friday this week. It felt like getting back to normal.

This week we branched out a bit from our regular Mexican/pizza/burger routine and went to Ziziki's Greek restaurant. Ziziki's has a few locations around town (we went to the Preston/Forest location in Dallas) that serves a variety of Greek and Italian favorites for a moderate price. The entrees ranged from $15-$30. I was excited to try this as I love Greek food, especially gyros.

It's all Greek to me! (photo credit: zizikis.com)

The restaurant is a little more upscale than we generally go for with MoFF. They have white tablecloths, an extensive wine list, the whole shebang. It was fun! We started out with the Spanakopita, which is filo dough stuffed with spinach, and ziziki bread, which is pita topped with cheese and herbs. Both were really good, but I preferred the ziziki bread. Spinach is not my favorite veggie and it was a little mushy.

Filo and spinach appetizer

For dinner, I tried the chicken souvlakis, which is basically skewers of seasoned chicken with red onions and Ziziki sauce served on a pita with roasted potatoes on the side. Zaziki (or tzatziki) sauce is a yogurt and cucumber sauce that is used often in Greek and Turkish cuisine. It's amazing. Ryan had the lamb gyro (pronounced like "yee-roe"), which was very similar to the souvlakis, except it is not served on a skewer.

My delicious Souvlakis

Ryan's delicious gyro

I really enjoyed Ziziki's. The food was great and I would highly recommend it. We will probably not go often as it was a little on the pricy side, but this would be a great place for a celebration or just a nice night out. Even picky eaters would like the souvlakis or gyro - they are pretty much just (tasty) meat and bread! How can you go wrong?