Mama, don't let your baby's restaurant be named one of America's best by Gourmet.
I still go to Hoover's fairly regularly, and it is still an okay place to eat: this time, though, I thought the jerked chicken was somewhat dry. The fries have also gone down in quality, and the hot wings just aren't as spicy as I remember.
What really gripes my ass about Hoover's, though, is the quality of the service, which ranges from fantastic (if you get Kevin, but I haven't seen him around in a while) to annoying (our frat-boy waiter and the front desk hostess). These days, the grating or just barely competent servers seem to dominate.
And the menu could really use a shake-up.
I like Hoover's, but there are still areas for improvement:
1. The lack of Diet Dr. Pepper on tap was not unexpected, but the lack of Diet Coke was irritating. Diet RC Cola? Have you ever had Diet RC Cola? It makes just about every other diet soda taste ambrosial by comparison.
2. What gives with the size of the appetizers? The chipolte chicken quesadillas were reasonably tasty, but positively Lilliputian. The wings (which are very good, and hot enough even for me) were slightly better but still ungenerous. (On the plus side, they seem to have charged us half the menu price for them; maybe it was happy hour.)
3. Don't bother with the gumbo; it had enough meat in it, but was overpriced and mediocre. (If you want great gumbo, try JC's Steakhouse, or wherever Yoli is cooking now.)
On the plus side, I was very pleased with my hamburger, and between it, the fries, and a salad, I was uncharacteristically too full to try the banana pudding cheesecake.
Interesting.
The garlic knots may be one of the best appetizer deals in Austin, at 2 for $1: an order of those, and maybe a half-salad for $4 (the spinich salad's pretty good) would make a pretty good dinner. There's a fair selection of beers available at $3 each: with tax and tip, you could get out for $10 or so. Not shabby if you're a bit hard up for cash, especially in this part of town.
Pizza? Okay. I thought the meatballs were quite tasty, but the sauce was slightly odd-tasting to me (maybe just a touch too tomato-ey, and not enough sweetness). It is a smooth sauce, though, which gets them points from me. The edges of the crust were a bit more chewy than I like (but I may be the only person who eats the whole crust on their pizza). I also liked the white pizza ("Casablanca"), but it is pretty rich: I'd maybe get a small one for two people, and plan on salad and garlic knots as well.
And the service seems very polite and accomodating. I like Rounder's a lot better for thin-crust pizza than Brick Oven or Frank and Angie's: Mangia's is close by, but the styles are so different that I don't want to compare them. (Yes, I know Mangia's serves thin-crust, too, but going there for thin-crust pizza is like joining the French Army for combat experience.) I don't think it qualifies as a destination joint, but it's a good place to eat after a trip to Waterloo and Cheapo.
Well, this is interesting: A tiny, independent pizza place right next to a Pizza Hut on West 6th Street (obviously no fear of the competition here). The decorating theme is Las Vegas Casinos, but it's so tasteful and restrained (mainly small pictures of Vegas on the wall and a roulette wheel on the menus) I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
We started off with the roll-like garlic knot appetizer. Figuring they would be about the size of donut holes, we placed 3 orders of 2 each at $1 an order (don't make me spell that out as a word problem). Wrong. They were huge, large enough to choke a horse (literally; if you pried open a horse's jaw and shoved one down it's throat, the result we be a choked horse and a nasty letter from the SPCA), or about the size of an extra-large apple. Unfortunately, they weren't nearly garlicky enough for me (they had plenty of olive oil); I'd like to see them raise the price and use more garlic, and maybe some butter on the side. Still, I can imagine these providing ample sustenance for downtown's wide array of pan-handling crack addicts to fill up cheaply after a hard day of sponging off the body politic. Salads were OK. Service was spotty, but the guy apologized in advance and said they were short-handed, so I'm willing to cut them some slack, as they did seem to be moving as fast as was humanly possible.
And the pizza? Pretty good but not great. We made the mistake of ordering three larges for the five of us and had more than a whole pizza left to take home. I wasn't wild about the combination of cheeses on the "Casablanca" pizza, but the closest we had to a "Lawrence" (ground beef, pepperoni, sausage and onions, only here it was "meatballs" instead of ground beef) was quite an acceptable offering, though the bottom of the anchovies and mushrooms pizza I split with Milton was blacker than I prefer.
The problem is that the pizza here is good but not compelling. I prefer deep-dish or thick crust pizza, so in the same general area I prefer Mangia's, Miltos or Conan's. For thin-crust pizza, I like Rounders better than Frank & Angie's, Sacconne's, and Austin Pizza, but not as much as Reale's, Nikki's or Hoak's. So, within the rather narrow confines of "thin crust pizza at a sit-down restaurant in the general area of downtown," Rounder's is a good choice.
The only thing I can think of to say about Pao's that hasn't already been said is: they've added a sushi bar since our last visit. I haven't gone there just for sushi yet, but I have tried the unagi and found it quite good.
Not a whole lot new to say. The Three Cup Chicken didn't seem to be quite as delicious this time around, and the service was inconsistent. Also, Pao's doesn't give you knives, which can lead to rather prolonged and inefficient sawing with your fork if you're trying to cut up one of the scallion pancakes. Still, a mediocre night at Pao's still beats a good night at just about any other Chinese restaurant in Austin.
Cozymel's has a great chipolte shirmp bisque. Indeed, that bisque would go into my pantheon of great soups in Austin (along with the roasted corn soup at Roaring Fork, the onion soup at Ancho's, and I'm not sure what all else).
That is, sadly, the only thing Cozymel's has going for it. I felt like we'd given the service plenty of time to shake out, but the waitstaff still seemed confused and fumbling (and took a platter off our table with food still on it before we could react, without asking: we thought they were just moving stuff around at our too-small table). Because they put the meat on top of the peppers, the fajitas Lawrence and I split had a sharp and (to me) unpleasant steamed pepper flavor. The nachos weren't worth the price, and I'm not rushing back anytime soon (unless I get a craving for that soup again: maybe just that and a salad).
As far as plastic Mexican chain restaurants go, I think CozyMel's is (despite the wretched, punny name) a step up from On the Border, the previous occupant of this space, but I'm still far from crazy about it. The decor is fairly nice (I particularly liked the blue-glass-mask-in-front of the-light accent used in their hallway), and by and large the food and service were OK, but the portions were far from generous for the price. The flameada was reasonably tasty, but the nachos, besides being slightly undersized, seemed to be missing something. Likewise the Fajitas Grande Dwight and I split weren't Grande enough, and the ratio of meat (laid on top) to everything else (stacked underneath) was definitely on the skimpy side. Likewise, my banana pudding dish (and especially the cinnamon pastry shell that came with it) was delicious, but the portion was way too small for the price.
I would not object to coming back and trying some of the "coastal" house specialties sometimes, but it's not exactly burning up the to-do list.
See the logs for April of 2004.