Very good appetizers: an excellent dish of lightly sauteed goat cheese hunks, pretty good hummus and good bread. My chicken and beef kebobs were also pretty nice.
I like The Pyramids much more than I do Ararat. I think Alborz is just slightly superior (mostly, I think Alborz does slightly better kebobs), but the distance between it and Pyramids is basically a nose. (That's a normal sized nose, not the one on the Sphnix.) The Pyramids is still pretty darn good.
This was a pleasant surprise.
Generally, I'm not too wild about Middle Eastern food, but that served at The Pyramids seems pretty good. The appetizers, fried goat cheese and one of those chunks-of-meat-in-yogurt-sauce things whose name eludes me at the moment, were both quite satisfactory. I also liked both my lamb and beef kebobs, as well as the gyro I had on the side. Service was generally good, and prices were very reasonable.
My only two real complaints: 1. By "home made potato chips" they mean "long cut french fries." The fries were fine, but forewarned is to have four arms. 2. No Diet Dr Pepper or Diet Coke. Guys, you aren't in Chicago, so you don't have to do the "pepsi pepsi" schtick. (Oddly enough, in my latest letter from Arthur C. Clarke, he says he has a pet chihuahua named Pepsi. The mind boggles. But I digress...) Get some real soft drinks already.
Though it's only been open a few months, I already like The Pyramids much better than Ararat, and slightly better than Alborz. Well worth a visit if you're looking for something unusual, or even if you just want a gyro.
The people who ran the late, unlamented Dixie's Cajun Roadhouse finally, after several years of struggle, decided to take the thing out back and put a bullet into the back of its head. (Curiously, these are the same people who own Truluck's.) Having done that, they didn't even bother (as far as I could tell) to strip the interior decor from the corpse before reopening as "Jack's Backyard".
I know what you're wondering: is it any better? No. The all-you-can-eat ribs were tough and poorly cooked, and the vaunted barbecue sauce wasn't very good: I've had better ribs for less money at Chili's.
I'm thinking new restaurant spot of the damned here.
As faux down-home, instant ersatz theme eateries go, I sort of like it.
The appetizers (chicken quesadillas and hot wings) were both tasty but somewhat undersized. On the other hand, my 1 pound of meat "Big Ass Burger" was indeed enormous, and reasonably tasty, though with more bun than I like (think of a Schlotsky's large, and you're in the ballpark), and I prefer hamburgers that build up more than out.
All in all, I wouldn't mind making a return trip to try something else, but in the same general area, Fuddruckers one pound hamburgers are superior.
Very good bulgogi, the best I've found so far in Austin. (I admit, though, that there are several other Korean places I haven't been able to try yet.) I was also pretty impressed with most of the tray of side dishes we were served. (I'd especially like to know what that green chip-like thing was: come to think of it, I'd also like a field guide to Korean restaurants. And come to think of that, dammit, why doesn't someone reprint The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters as a memorial to the late Dr. James McCauley, who, by all accounts I've seen, was a pretty nifty guy? I mean, you have to like a guy who threw a party every year to celebrate the anniversary of the adoption of the Korean national alphabet. Bringing this back around to the topic...)
Anyway, the sushi was also pretty good, though I think it was a bit on the pricy side. I'll have to go back and check. The only other issue I had was the musical background: the choice of contemporary pop music just seemed out of place and wrong for the surroundings.
Kimchi didn't seem to get a lot of traffic while we were there, perhaps because of the location in a dying stip mall. I think this is a shame, as it really is a quite reasonable dining spot: I look forward to another visit.
(October 2004 note: Good news! According to Gourmet, the University of Chicago Press is, indeed, reprinting The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters. Bad news: according to Gourmet, the new edition is set from the same plates as the original, but the page size has been reduced, so that the whole thing is shrunk down and harder to read than the original (which itself was apparently no picnic). Clicking on the link above will take you to Amazon, and yes, I will get a kick-back.)My previous experiences with Korean food have all been negative (and my experiences with Korean spam even more so), so Kimchi was a pleasant surprise. As far as "sushi/something else Asian" restaurants goes, I think it does a much better job than Imperial Asia. I liked the dumpling appetizers just fine (though plates would have been nice). My beef dish was acceptable, but not really memorable; there was nothing to distinguish it, good or bad, from typical Chinese fare. My sushi seemed fairly fresh, with prices, alas, in line with Austin sushi prices these days. (And the charge is per two pieces.)
The most pleasant surprise was the variety of tiny side dishes they brought to our table to accompany the meal; sort of like the array of side dishes you get with the dinner thali at Sarovar, except they don't suck. While I have no taste for the restaurant's namesake dish (proving once and for all that, no matter how it's cooked, I still hate cabbage), some of the side dishes, including the dried squid, some tiny cut sausages, and a crispy sweet-and-salty green chip, were very tasty indeed. Service was uneven, ranging from too-eager at the beginning to some slight waits on drink refills later, but acceptable overall.
While the sushi and ambiance at Mikado are definitely superior, Kimchi is well worth a try if you're looking for a dinner of sushi-and-something-else.
Good sized combo plates, nice looking place, a variety of sauces (I like the chipolte sauce), waiters that pay attention when you order, and reasonble prices. Yeah, I can get behind this.
They weren't terribly crowded, either. Unfortunately, this is probably because of the location: they're stuck on the west side of I-35 south of 183. (In the former location of "Dick Clark's American Bandstand Grill". And what a misguided concept that was. Anyone know if there are any surviving examples?) And because of the stupid decision to close the 183 exit ramp from I-35, you pretty much have to get off at St. Elmo and wait through two lights if you're trying to get to it coming north on the freeway. For crying out loud, who decided that the traffic problem would be solved by closing the 183 off-ramp? The traffic problems in that stretch are caused by the people getting on at the entrance ramp before St. Elmo and having to get over immediately: the smart thing to do would have been to close that ramp and not let people on the freeway, rather than keeping people from getting off it.
I was not impressed with the other location of Antonio's we tried, so I didn't have my hopes up for this one, as both the location and the exterior decor ("Neon! Neon! Neon!") made me fear a repeat of Baby Acapulco's. Shockingly, this location turned out not only not to suck, but was actually pretty good.
It's a big restaurant, and it was pretty easy for us to get a seat on a Saturday night. I rather liked the decorations on the walls (an array of various crucifixes about ten feet away from some sort of carved demon; obviously the first was there to keep the second under control...). And the service was quick and efficient, a virtue rarer than it should be among Austin TexMex places.
And the food? While the nachos were merely adequate, I thought the bites I had of the botanitas platter were nice, and my combo platter (enchiladas, fajita wraps, and a taco that seemed more like a chalupa) were all good and quite reasonably priced. We all left stuffed for under $20 bucks each.
I would have to go back to Pappasito's and Amaya's Taco Village before awarding them the overall corridor championship, but Antonio's seems far and away the choice for TexMex on the Southbound side of I-35 between 183 and the river. However, one warning: you have to turn into Antonio's parking lot before the restaurant itself; otherwise you'll have to loop all the way around again like a certain pavement inspector of our acquaintance...
This gets high marks from a lot of the local usual suspects: I can sort of understand why, even though it is just a few tables attached to a store, but I can't endorse that view.
Eaves does have a few things going for it: since it is in a seafood store, you figure the fish has got to be fresh. The fried fish fillet on my platter was among the best I've had in town. Unfortunately, the shrimp, scallops, and fried oysters I had were just so-so. The stuffed crab was actually more like a crab burger: no shell, just a formed patty. And, frankly, it was real damn salty: too much so for my taste. I would have prefered raw oysters to fried: but, curiously (in my opinion) Eaves does not offer raw oysters. And, while I understand why they have a small menu, the fact remains that the selection is rather small. The prices seemed pretty reasonable to me, though: $7.50 for the fried seafood platter (plus the stuffed crab and fried oysters as extras).
I think this is probably better as a lunch joint if you live in the area, or a take-out dinner place, rather than a destination.
This is a no-frills restaurant (actually just a counter and some tables) attached to a pretty decent seafood market. Unfortunately, as a restaurant, it doesn't impress me. Though cheap, the gumbo and étouffée were nothing to write home about, and tasted way too much like each other. The fried food is fine, but pricey for what you get; frankly, it's not any better than long John Silver's and a good bit more expensive. Likewise with the blackened snapper; sure, it's half the price of what a blackened plate goes for at Pappadeaux, but the latter gives you at least three times the amount of food, and it's considerably better to boot. In addition, Eaves Bros. is only open until 7 PM. Unless there's a particularly good special on sale there (which they seem to stop at 4:30 (!)), or you want to try the Poboys (which none of us had), I can't see any real reason to dine there.
See the logs for June of 2003.