Mel's Tomball Cafe (Tomball, natch)
Since this is about a mile from my parents' new house, we went out to eat there. They're most famous for the Mega Mel Burger (1.5 pounds ground beef, 1 pound (pre-cooked) bacon, one pound cheese) which, with condiments, seems almost a foot high. Not feeling quite ready to tackle that, I had the regular Mel Burger, which has 2/3rds the meat (one pound) and half the bacon, at 1/3rd the price, and you can still fit it in your mouth. After handily demolishing that, and some onion rings, and still feeling a little peckish, I went home and had some ice cream. I think I'll attempt the MegaMel burger next time around.
Good point: The Mel Burger is quite good, quite large, and reasonably priced. The onion rings are also quite good, and have pretty generous portions.
Bad Points: You CAN'T get a hamburger medium rare anymore! The health nazis seem to have gotten to everyone but Fuddrucker's. It's bad enough that the bastards got to Chili's, but when they can get to an ostensible "country cafe" like Mel's, it makes me fear for the future of this great Republic (Texas or U.S., take your pick).
I might try braving the MegaMel Burger at some future date, perhaps after Atkins lets me slip below the 200 pound barrier for the first time in a decade (I'm getting close...). But I think I want to take a long bike ride to work up a real appetite first...
I thought Hill's had a lot of promise when we visited last year. Unfortunately, things didn't seem to have come together on our most recent visit. While the bread is still good, I thought the barbecue had declined considerably since my last visit. A real disappointment.
I think Hill's makes much better hamburgers than BBQ. The hamburgers are quite tasty and reasonably priced for what you get, although I prefer both Fuddrucker's and Southside BBQ in the bang-for-buck category. Other than that, I don't have anything to say about this visit that I didn't cover last time except to note that our 20-something slacker waiter seemed more interested in being a "cool dude" than in actually serving our table in a competent manner, and got my Diet Coke, no ice order wrong. Gee, maybe Austin's economy really is recovering.
Okay Vietnamese food, but I don't think this is one of the best in Austin. Personally, I prefer to go to 888, just across the street.
Still great eggrolls, still a decent bowl of bun, and still pretty cheap. Other than that, nothing new to say...
Crispy catfish fillets, yadda yadda, faux down-home, yadda yadda, middling fries, yadda yadda, Groundhog Day, yadda yadda.
Two things I wonder about:
Nothing really new to report here. They still have decent catfish and good cylindrical hush puppies and fries. And I like the spicy tarter sauce. And it's cheaper and several orders of magnitude less annoying than Joe's Crab Shack.
As for drawbacks, they have the world's smallest salad bar (lettuce, cheese, croutons, two kinds of dressing...and that's it); it's actually more of a salad cart. Still, if I wanted fried fish, I'd eat at Castaways instead.
See the logs for November of 2003.