First of all, this place is way the hell out. The official SDC GPS gives an as-the-crow-files distance of 19.3 miles from my apartment to the restaurant, but it feels more like 30. (I think RO's is about 7 miles past the Hwy 71/620 intersection, but that's just a rough estimate.)
Second of all, this is a kind of tiny spot (though they do have some outside seating). Thirdly, the food is darn good. I ordered up a mess of barbecue: one of the nice things about RO's is that they'll let you create your own barbecue combo plate, in addition to the predefined ones on the menu. So I got a four-meat combo with healthy servings of pork ribs (very good, the best I've had recently), brisket (also good), sausage (not bad, but pretty much the standard style sausage everyone else serves) and ham (excellent), plus plenty of fries (yes!) for about $19, and didn't feel ripped off at all. RO's barbecue sauce is also pretty darn good. (Warning: they serve the sauce in recycled Grolsch beer bottles, which caused us some confusion at first, and resulted in a gentle mocking ("First time here, eh?") from the waitress.)
And they do a pretty good pie. I broke with my "no deserts until Bin Lauden is captured or killed" vow, figuring that the re-election of the president justified a one-night celebratory lapse, to sample some of the excellent chocolate cream pie, with a meringue that was ultra-light and a mile high.
I like this place.
First, a hat tip to Mick Vann, author of the Austin Chronicle article about the SDC. He had suggested visiting this place, and everything he said about it was true.
Don't be fooled by the exterior. While R.O.'s Outpost does indeed serve more than passable BBQ (I liked the sauce, albeit not as much as the sauce at The Salt Lick), what they truly excel at is chicken fried steak. This is the best chicken fried steak I've ever had, bar none. Delicious and incredibly tender, with a tasty crust and savory gravy, it blows away the chicken fried steak at Threagill's and Hoover's. I had the apple pie (and I don't usually get pie, but that was Mick's recommendation) ala mode, and it was exceptional as well. The potato salad was good (not great), and the fries were the adequate square-cut variety. (They also served a pickle and half an apricot with every plate.) The prices were downright cheap for what you get.
If you're looking for the platonic ideal of chicken fried steak, and don't mind the drive out to Spicewood, R.O.'s Outpost is the place to visit.
Fairly decent Italian food. They devote an awful lot of menu space to various dessert concoctions (none of which I tried, due to my vow). The appetizers seem a bit on the expensive side to me for a place this far out ($8 for calamari?). I liked the crawfish linguini well enough, but, thinking back, it just doesn't stick out in my mind.
I'd say that's the problem here: the food is decent enough (for sure better than the Olive Garden), and it is a good enough place if you live in the area, but there's nothing so compelling here as to make me want to drive back on a regular basis. (Except maybe those ice cream desserts, after Bin Lauden is captured.)
Summary: Tiny appetizers, decent entrees, fabulous desserts. The calamari was on the skimpy side and just a little chewy, though both it and the fried mozzarella had a very nice batter. The antipastia plate sunk way below skimpy to hit "out and out ripoff;" There was maybe three ounces of meat on the entire plate; for $7.95, this is out-and-out insulting. I liked my Linguine Crawfish, though Chuck didn't think his was quite fresh enough. Service was generally good, but there was an unusually long wait between the salads (adequate) and the main course.
There's a lot of emphasis on different desserts, with more than half the menu taken up with color photo dessert porn. I thought my ice-cream concoction was very tasty indeed.
This strikes me as an acceptable neighborhood Italian place with the potential to be more; worth vising if you live in Pflugerville, but not worth the drive otherwise. If you are going: avoid the antipasti plate and you should be fine.
Pretty darn good fish tacos. And...
Well, that's about all, really. Curra's does much better tamales, in my opinion. And when it comes down to it, Fresh Salsa does fish tacos that are just as good and cheaper.
Eh. There's nothing particularly wrong with Barryhill Baja Grill, but nothing outstanding either. Service was good after a slow start. I liked the crab cake appetizer, mainly due to the chipolte mayonnaise dipping sauce. Nachos were OK; they were the right size for the price, but either there was too little cheese, or what cheese there was inadequately distributed over the surface area of the chips. Though not particularly hot, the salsa was nicely tangy.
Alas, the entrees were generally disappointing. The beef taco was good, but the grilled fish taco failed to inspire me, while the beef enchilada was adequate but significantly overpriced for the quantity you get. I also split some pork tamales with Dwight, which proved to be a mistake, since they were masa-heavy and thus unforgivably bland. (Maybe even a little blander than your average tamales, which is a neat trick. Is there some Mexican "tradition" that states tamales have to be absolutely bland? Why not throw some Cajun spices into the tamale mix? Or some garlic? Or anything to keep it from being unreservedly bland?)
All in all it's pretty much your basic TexMex chain; nothing horrific, nothing outstanding, with the possible exception of the sunset view. You'd be far better off cruising down to Abuelo's; even the Maudie's across the street is a bit better.
See the logs for December of 2004.