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?

 

Casa Vieja

This week we made a return visit to a Colombian restaurant in Carrollton called Casa Vieja. We normally avoid repeats, but the first trip to Casa Vieja was over a year ago and only a few people went. I didn't mind another trip because the food is really authentic and delicious! The menu (and website) are mostly in Spanish, but don't let that scare you off - the staff is very friendly and eager to help you understand. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but don't let that scare you either. It's perfectly nice on the inside.

photo credit: http://mywebsitepronto.com/clients/casavieja/

If you are not familiar with Colombian cuisine, it uses a lot of seasoned meats, potatoes, plantains, etc. In my experience, it is similar to food from Cuba or other Latin American countries. I tend to like it because it is not spicy.

We started our the meal with handmade flavored margaritas. I tried the mango, and it was really good! It was really sweet so I didn't finish it all, but I would recommend it!

Reminded me of our honeymoon to the Dominican Republic!

We had the empanadas on our last trip and I was excited to have them again. Our waiter let us know that they are a Casa Vieja fan favorite. As you can (sort of) see in the picture, they are corn dough pastries filled with brisket and potatoes.Yum!

You can't go wrong with brisket.

I had the chicken and beef kabobs with rice, beans, avocado, plantain, and a corn cake. The rice was particularly good, and the meats were juicy and flavorful.

I love this place because you can tell that the food (and staff) are very authentic. Eating Colombian food was a nice change from our normal routine of burger, pizza, and tex-mex, and I would very much recommend Casa Vieja!

Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen

We had another birthday this week, and Nick selected Pappadeaux for his celebratory dinner. Pappadeaux is a seafood restaurant that is part of the Pappa's restaurant group (along with Pappasito's Cantina, Pappa's Bros. Steakhouse, and Pappa's BBQ).

photo credit: pappadeaux.com/home

Now, I'm not a seafood eater, so my opinion on Pappadeax is a little biased. Thankfully, lent is over, so I was able to go with my seafood restaurant staple - chicken tenders.

If it comes from the water, I most likely will not eat it. No fish here!

These tenders were pretty good - pretty much tasted like your average fried chicken and fries dish. I left happy, but not overly impressed. I was impressed with the large beer glass that my Shock Top arrived in!

This glass required two hands to lift.

Pappadeaux's was pretty good, and we had fun celebrating Nick's birthday, but it's probably not somewhere that I would want to go back to. I'm just not into seafood and we've been to tons of places that I liked better. If we decide to repeat a Meal of Food location, I would choose somewhere else.

Chicken Scratch

This week MoFF took us to Chicken Scratch, a mostly outdoor fried chicken restaurant west of downtown Dallas. It's a pretty cool place - you walk up to the counter to order, then find an open picnic table outside to enjoy your meal.

Photo credit: cs-tf.com/wordpress

It has a stage area for live music, an adjoining bar called The Foundry and a play area for the kiddos. It's even dog friendly! I wish I would have known that - I totally would have brought Robin Sparkles. It had a very laid back, Austin style vibe. The only drawback was the wait - it was pretty crowded and we stood in line for quite a while before we could order. Luckily, the weather was nice, so the wait was no big deal.

Poor Sparkles had to stay at home.

 For dinner, I had the chicken fingers, and a biscuit. We got fries and mac and cheese for the table to share.

Just for the record, I split these with a friend.

The fries reminded me of the seasoned fries from Five Guys.

I liked everything that I had with the exception of the mac and cheese - it had green chiles in it, which I just didn't really care for. I had pretty high expectations of this place because I had heard that the Chicken Scratch has the same chef as Smoke and Smoke is AMAZING. The food was really tasty, but it wasn't as mind blowingly great as Smoke.

I would totally go back to Chicken Scratch. The atmosphere was cool, and it was great place to spend a evening outside in Texas, especially when the weather is so nice. It would be a fun place to go with a big group since it's so casual. If we go again, I hope to get there a little earlier so that we don't have to wait for so long and so that we can snag a better table. And I'm totally bringing the dog!

Nate's Seafood and Steakhouse

This past Friday, we celebrated Eric's birthday and the last Friday of lent by going to Nate's Seafood in Addison. Nate's is a popular seafood restaurant that prides itself on its authentic Cajun style dishes. We learned from our last attempt to eat at Nate's that we should arrive early to avoid the rush, which turned out to be important as we had a group of 13 people. The parking lot was full when we got there, so we had to park in the restaurant next door and walk over. In the end, we got our table without too much trouble, unlike our last visit!

We started our with hush puppies and bread. The bread was really tasty - pretty much because it was drenched in butter.

There was soo much butter on the bread! It was sooo good!

For dinner, I had a smorgasbord of sides since I was not eating meat for lent (last time for this year!) and I'm just not into seafood. It's a texture issue and I don't care for it. And yes, I have tried several different things. So I went with the side of veggies, the onion rings, and a baked potato.

some carbs with your carbs?

I liked the veggies and potato a lot. I wasn't super thrilled with the onion rings. They could have used a little more breading. Ryan was more adventurous then me and tried the blackened alligator Po-boy. He reports that it was tasty.

Um Um Gator!

We had a pretty fun MoFF! I can't say that I was a huge fan of Nate's, but I know that it's because I'm biased against sea food and I ate sides for dinner. I still enjoyed myself and I know that those in the group that eat fish enjoyed their dinner. My only caution would be to get there early if you want to go on a Friday night!