Suburban Eaters Club

So I fell a little behind updating this thing, then SXSW happened and we all know nothing else happens in Austin during SXSW. So let’s do a quick rundown of where we’ve been up until now. Unfortunately we only have pictures for some of these places which I’ll stick in where appropriate.

Casa Chapala is a great interior Mexican cuisine joint. The menus are giant, and are reminiscent of the kind of burned leather goods you may find at street vendors in Mexico. No one was brave enough to get the Molcajete bowl of amazingly hot amazingness, but I think we all enjoyed our food.

For our next actual suburban outing we hit up Red Lobster. The generousness of one of our members loaded us with $100 worth of gift certificates he’s accumulated over the last few years. We decided to forego our original plan of buying $100 worth of cheddar biscuits and putting them into a pile, and instead chowed down. No one actually had lobster, thus making this barnacle filled guy happy.

However, one member remarked that the steak he had was better than Outback’s. The shrimp was quite tasty as evidenced here.

Then we went to one of my favorite places, G’raj Mahal. The delicious Indian food trailer in the Rainey Street district.  If you’ve never been here, just look for the giant snake bicycle.

I think we all agree that G’raj Mahal is delicious, though some dishes are definitely better than others.  Here we all are happy and filled with delicious food.

Next we tried to go to Firefly Pies, the only wood fired oven pizza trailer that I’m aware of.  However, they had closed that day for maintenance or some such thing, so we all went to various other trailers in the area. Some had fish and chips, some had philly cheesesteaks, and others had different trailer pizza. Ultimately, if you get the crazy ice cream in the edible wrapper, the wrapper may not be as palatable as is implied with the word “edible”.  Also, eastside drive in may be closing down soon, due to gentrification of the east side, so we may have to come back to Firefly Pies soon.

Then we went to House Pizza. Good pizzas at a reasonable price and delicious. Not everyone liked the subterranean pizza with potatoes and other veggies, but I thought it was delicious and would recommend it.

There, we’re all caught up. Next up is Applebee’s, but I’ve been having some problems convincing others to attend, we’ll see what happens.

This week we went to DK Sushi on Karaoke Night.  This was a rather subdued night for karaoke at DK’s compared to the reputation of not being able to get in on this night.  This point was highlighted by the constant hilarious barrage of insults from DK (who hosts his karaoke night) about how we were all pussies.  The karaoke stage is in the center of the restaurant/market, and DK is the center piece of the show.  He insults the people who won’t sing as well as the people who will sing, constantly talking about how he’s trying to bring this bad ass night to Austin prominence.

At the first sign of the night slowing, DK will put naked ladies on behind the text of the karaoke, which is always fun to see who will get tripped up as they’re trying to sing.  DK appoints a girl as the “DD”, designated drinker, to take a sake bomb with each person who has sung.  Only a girl may apply as DK says, “I don’t want to see a guy get really drunk”.  He makes lewd comments to women, calls guys “gay boys”, and may cut you off mid song if you’re not “making love to the microphone”.  All of his antics are cheered on by the crowd, which contains a fair amount of regulars.  In general, he’s a pretty hilarious old man who wants to have a good time and will buy sake bombs for everyone in his joint. 

The menu is fairly limited with all the main staples you’ll find in Nigiri as well as rolls. Nothing extremely out of the ordinary as this is a true Sushi bar with no other kitchen.  That said, as our repeater friends said, they come here because the normal sushi is quite good compared to a lot of other places.  The menu focuses more on the alcohol (probably as DK wants it), particularly the sake.  But you won’t get this type of karaoke experience anywhere else.  Only one of us was brave enough to sing on this first karaoke outing and they were gong’d off the stage.  Apparently DK was not feeling the Disney songs that had started to be sung.  I would definitely come back, but hopefully on a more crazy night.

Last week we went to Black Star Co-op.  It’s a local microbrewery with pretty damn good food, and if you’re so inclined, you can become a member/owner or however those co-op things work.  Here’s a couple of points about this place to help streamline your experience. There are two ordering lines, one for drinks only, and one for food and drinks.  This would be great if the place weren’t always packed, so the lines are basically always out the door.  This brings up the second point, seating is scarce.  It’s first come first serve, but as it’s quite packed, you may have to search a bit.  A nice thing about this place is that they pay their employees a living wage, so there is no tipping.

No pics for this trip, but I at least had a wonderful shepherd’s pie, and the appetizer of fries covered with chorizo and melted manchego was amazing.  Everyone else’s food looked good and I didn’t hear any complaining so I assume they enjoyed it.  There was a slight rain interlude, but we dealt with it and continued our meal.  I’m not a beer drinker myself, but those who were seemed to like the craft brews from Black Star.  And for me, they had some cider from one of the Austin Cideries which was quite tasty.  

A few of us have been here before, and we were advised to avoid the peanut brittle or whatever it’s called.  Which we did, and everything turned out fine.  So there’s that going for us, which is nice.  All in all a pretty good trip out for all.

This week we went to the Outback Steakhouse for our suburban eatery.  This franchise has a storied history being founded during the Australian Craze of the 80’s started by that glorious fish-out-of-water movie “Crocodile Dundee”.  Seeing as how Australia is literally the other corner of a map away from us, this chain was founded in the closest thing the US has to desolate underdeveloped land filled with dangerous creatures…Florida.  But to cash in on the popularity of ol’ Mick Dundee, they peppered this restaurant with homages to the movie and the Australian culture it described.  This resulted in Paul Hogan suing the chain at least once do to infingement on his created character’s image, with a steak even being named the Michael Dundee steak.  On a side note, my father has a weird obsession with Australia, second only to his Asian fetish (resulting in yours truly), whereby there’s a Kangaroo skin on my wall at home and he actually kept one of these old Outback menus with “Dundee” on it before the lawsuits removed it.  Perhaps Paul Hogan should have deferred to the man who the Crocodile Dundee character was actually based on.  Outrage at this lawsuit is probably what led to his death in an armed standoff with Australian police.

But on to the food.  First up, the Bloomin’ Onion!

Wow that looks delicious…ish.  It was quite good actually, especially when you dip it in that sauce that’s apparently made of mayonnaise and horseradish.  Seriously, read the wikipedia article on Outback Steakhouse.  With all the butter, cream, and shortening, as well as a 17 spice blend heavy seasoning on the steaks, no wonder this place is delicious! Also makes you wonder why the salt and pepper grinders are that low in the picture above.  A suburban diet is definitely high sodium.

Next up, drinks. A couple of us tried the “skinny rita”, which was just tequila and fruit juices. Now fruit juice is pretty high calorie wise, so it makes me wonder what’s in the regular “ritas” to make them non-skinny.  Also, what the fuck is up with margaritas in an Australian restaurant? Anyway, one brave soul went for the Margarita Trio, which is quite impressive:

Here he is contemplating where to start on this tower-o-rita. And here he is finishing the third and final rita in style:

Lastly, a few of us ordered the special of the season, the Steak and Seafood Mixed Grill.  We thought it would make for a brilliant side by side comparison of the advertised vs. the reality, check it out in the post above.