I am sorry to say that I can not report on this conspiracy, due to a badly timed cold.
The Moonshine Bar & Grill offered a schizophrenic dining experience. Everything I had was either excellent or really bland.
Excellent: The crab back appetizer was quite tasty, and a nicely portioned for the price. My molasses and chile glazed pork chop was very savory indeed, while the baked macaroni side was also good, though it could have used more bacon. I also enjoyed the homemade potato chips (though I don't think they were worth $4.95) and the corn muffins.
Bland: The calamari was utterly tasteless; change the recipe or junk it entirely. The bread pudding was, at best, mediocre. Caesar salad was adequate, but nothing more. The steak fries were as uninspired as most steak fries usually are. And oddly enough given my pork chop, the bite I had of Dwight's pork tenderloin was almost unforgivably bland.
Depending on what you order, you could either have an excellent meal at The Moonshine Bar & Grill, or an entirely forgettable one. Overall it strikes me as a cheaper version of what the Roaring Fork offers up, but with less innovation and more uncertain execution. I wouldn't absolutely rule out a subsequent visit, but both the 18% automatic gratuity and the frequent difficulty of finding parking near the convention center make such a return engagement fairly unlikely.
Generic TexMex. Maybe a little better than Serrano's.
Adequate. That pretty much sums it up. Nachos were OK and, at $4.95, not too expensive, but you only get six; the curly fries were only $1.50, but you got a serving smaller than a Popeye's small. Fajitas and enchiladas were OK but nothing special. Pretty decent flameada, and not a bad Trece Leches cake, though not the best I've had. Service was good, and the chips were a tick better than average.
I can't come up with a compelling reason to tell you to go, or to stay away.
This conspiracy was a complete disaster. I will let Lawrence have his say, and then we shall speak no more of it.
(Men's Room Rating: 2. Would have been a 3, but it needed some mopping.)
It turned out to be a bad idea to show up at Truluck's north on Father's Day Weekend without a reservation. (We did this because we had forgotten it was Father's Day Weekend.) It is an even worse idea to show up with 11 people, an unusually high (albeit not unprecedented) turnout for an SDC. With a party that large, they said they could seat us about the same time Microsoft shipped a security-hole-free version of Windows.
So then to plan B, a sojourn to the Outback Steakhouse up 183, where they were able to seat us at two adjacent tables in short order. And the food was good, if not superlative. Excellent cheese fries, very good salads, and decent bread. My porterhouse was acceptable, but not great; it could have used more seasoning. JC's does a much better job in the same price range. Service was generally quite good.
On this stretch of 183, I prefer Outback to Saltgrass, but probably not as much as Texas Land & Cattle Company.
Please eat at the Little Texas Bistro (214 N. Main Street, Buda. (512) 312-5828, closed Sunday and Monday, 5-9 PM Tuesday-Thursday, 5-10 PM Friday-Saturday).
This is an ambitious and amazingly cool effort to do a fine dining restaurant in Buda, not exactly noted as a sprawling metropolis. The menu changes frequently: the night I went, I had a peach and sausage risotto (Yes, peach and sausage. I thought it sounded odd, too, but the combination worked well.), an excellent warm morbier cheese wrapped in proscutto and lightly fried, and a wonderful dish of duck confit and duck leg, served with a sort of "bread pudding" made with cherries and red onion. I was glowing with pleasure by the time we left; my folks, who are generally more critical than I am, enjoyed it as well.
I hope to do a full SDC here at some point soon, but, in the meantime, I strongly encourage you to go. It should be noted, though, that this is a small restaurant (only nine tables), and the staff strongly recommends reservations on Friday and Saturday night.
Fair to middling sushi (though, due to a lapse on my part, I didn't try the unagi, my usual test for sushi). I tried the chicken bulgogi, and it was just okay, but the shu mai and gyoza were quite good. This isn't a horrible restaurant, by any stretch of the imagination, but Kimchi and Korea House are both better enough that I have difficulty justifying driving all the way out here just for the food.
Reasonably priced but small and utterly undistinguished sushi. The unagi in particular seemed inexplicably bland, and also I didn't care for the dumplings. On the other hand, the salad dressing was very interesting (we debated exactly what it was made from), the shemui appetizer (sort of a deep fried pork/shrimp thing) was quite tasty, and the wasabi was plenty potent (a fact I found out when I took an over-generously slathered bite and almost choked). And the fried (tempura) ice cream was also very good, albeit it not as large or tasty as that offered up at Mesa Rosa.
Might be worth a shot if you want to try the non-sushi dishes, but there are plenty of better choices around town.
See the logs for July of 2005.