A very solid Middle Eastern restaurant, with good kabobs, excellent appetizers, and reasonable prices. Great value.
Most of the same compliments and complaints as the last visit, which is good food at a decent price, but uneven service (I waited about five minutes for a refill). The gyro plate is still a nice bargain, and you do get a pretty extensive spread if you opt for the "Appetizer for Two" spread, which is more a "Appetizer for Two People Who Will Be Too Stuffed to Eat Anything Else" spread. We divided it seven ways and there was still some left.
Once upon a time, my friends and I ate regularly at the various Lone Star Cafe locations around town. Then they went to hell. I'm not sure if the service or the food started declining first: in retrospect, it should have been an early warning sign when they started charging for bread. (My sister has a story about finding a fly in her drink at a Lone Star: as she tells it, the problem wasn't the fly itself, but the server's reaction to her pointing this out.) The chain eventually filed Chapter 11, and continued to go downhill from there, nearly going into Chapter 7 before finding someone who would pick up the wreckage (including, apparently, one of the worst web sites in the world).
As Lawrence notes below, Mike and I had been wanting to see what was left of the chain, and if it had improved any. Well, the answer to "what's left" is three locations (this one, San Marcos, and Hillsboro).
Has it gotten any better? Well, I thought the "cheesecake chimichanga" was an entertainingly bizarre idea, the service was pretty good, and the appetizers weren't bad. My barbecue plate, though, was pretty miserable, especially the brisket. Other diners seemed reasonably happy with their meals, though, such as the chicken fried steak: it might be worth a try if you're a CFS fan. Personally, I'm done with the chain.
Nostalgia is a moron.
Back in the dim mists of legend (i.e, the 80s), when ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams roamed the earth, Lone Star Cafe was a thriving local chain of Texas eateries. Then the quality declined, and they all but disappeared from the landscape.
Upon hearing rumors of a surviving specimen up near Lakeline Mall, Dwight resolved to mount an expedition to take the pulse of the old dinosaur. Given it's near extinction, Lone Star Cafe seems to be doing surprisingly well.
What Lone Star Cafe does is down home Texas comfort food, served up in more than generous portions. The fajita nachos in particular seemed pretty generous. Decent salads. And they serve a hefty chicken fried steak plate. Though not in the same league as the chicken fried steak served at R.O.'s Outpost, it's still a very credible effort and a good value for the price. I was too full to have more than a bite of Dwight's dessert.
Lone Star Cafe offers up good value for your money. It's good to see that the old beast still has some life in it yet.
I like Chinatown in general (but I do think they are a bit pricy) and I like this particular location (which I still say is your best bet for Chinese in Westlake). However, my main dish on this visit, the chicken and lobster, was really disappointing: the chicken was tough and stringy, and the sauce for the lobster seemed overly sweet.
I've had good experiences here at lunch, and at dinner other times, so I suspect this was either a bad dish or an off night in the kitchen. To be safe, if you decide to go, I'd stay away from the lobster and chicken combo. The appetizers and soups were pretty good, though.
After some lukewarm experiences with the north Chinatown, we pretty much stopped going, but we thought it would be worth giving the Westlake location a try.
The pup-pu platter was adequate, although the ribs, usually my favorite, seemed too salty. The wonton soup was good, but not great. I quite enjoyed my spicy duck (they did make an effort to make it as hot as I asked, even though it fell a bit short), but not as much as the Amazing Duck With Wonderful Sauce at Pao's.
For dessert I had the flaming banana with sesame sauce. The presentation, with it being prepared flaming next to our table, was nice, but the taste was pretty mediocre. Despite the floorshow, it just wasn't worth $5.95.
This isn't as good as the north location was in it's heyday; however, it is good enough be worth a visit, and one of the Best Chinese places (along with Hunan Lion and China Dynasty) south of the river.
Decent enough burger: I liked the buns better than Fuddrucker's (but not the meat), and I liked the condiment bar (also similar to Fudd's). I also thought the fried mushrooms were good. I might go back and try the bulgogi burger, just for the odd factor, but otherwise nothing here got me excited.
Eh. The burger wasn't bad, but the onion rings sucked and the shake was mediocre at best. Given the nearness of Fuddrucker's, and the even-greater-than-usual presence of Austin's agressive panhandling community, I can't really recommned BurgerTex for anyone except car-less locals who can't drive someplace better.
This is a tough review for me to write.
Let me say: I liked the mici, a kind of sausage. I also thought the meatballs were good. And I was impressed by the efforts of the family that seems to be running the place.
On the other hand, neither the meatball soup nor the sauteed mushrooms with my mici platter were really to my taste. The soup, in particular, was very heavy with tomato: not Drakula's fault, to be sure, and I was taking a flyer on it. Live and learn. However, the mushrooms just didn't taste right to me: I can't explain it any better than that.
I think I'm having trouble with this because it is a family run place, serving an unusual style of food...and that style of food happens to be one that I'm not really in tune with. I think if I went back, I could get a good meal there, but I have trouble convincing myself that I should go back.
Austin has not been overly kind to cuisines originating north of the Alps and east of the Rhine. Taste of Hungary didn't last long, and a management change killed Gunther's. So it remains to be seen how long Drakula, a Romanian-themed eatery, will last. (And no, they don't serve blood sausage.)
The physical space is far from imposing, being your generic tiny strip mall space. The menu, in addition to being crudely laid out (we're talking Microsoft Publisher 1.0 here), is rather limited.
And the food? Not bad.
Pluses: The appetizer plate was fairly tasty, especially the meatballs, and I really liked my pork schnitzel, which had a light, flavorful batter.
Minuses: If your side salad is going to consist of nothing but tomatoes and cucumbers, perhaps you should mention that on the menu. It was actually fine (I do not share Dwight and Chuck's fear and loathing of whole tomatoes), but still odd. And the dessert menu is extremely limited.
Overall, the food was interesting enough that I wouldn't mind coming back, though I would like to see a wider selection of appetizers and desserts. I would also like to see a wider range of Eastern European cuisine in Austin. How about Czech, or German, or Russian? Or even Polish? (Don't forget Poland.)
See the logs for November of 2005.