Lawrence was attending the WorldCon.
I'm tired of Cuba.
I'm sick of Elian. (I'm sicker of Janet Reno.) I'm fed up with hearing about the damn Buena Vista Social Club. I find Latin music to range from the completely unlistenable to the merely boring. I'm delighted the Latin Grammy Awards were canceled this year. (What, Latin music can't compete with the rest of the world? They need their own awards? Who decided Cuba was a Latin country, anyway?) I'm fed up with inconsistant U.S. immigration policy. May the bird of Paradise fly up Fidel's nose and give him a fatal grand mal seizure.
That having been said, Habana is an okay restaurant. Not great: I thought my broiled pork steak was a bit bland. They do have good empanadas, fried plantains, and hot sauce. The service was reasonably attentive, but not without problems: they have trouble with ice tea, and one of the waiters is just a touch too meddlesome. But at these prices, I can deal with it.
It's interesting to contrast the Cuban exile community with the Vietnamese exile community. While both are refugees from brutal communist dictatorships, Vietnamese refugees have spread out across the country, opening Pho restaurants in just about every American city. By contrast, the majority of Cuban refugees seem to have settled in the greater Miami area. While this fact has lead to a few things the rest of the nation has to be grateful for, it's nonetheless made Cuban cuisine considerably more difficult to find than Pho.
However, now Austin has it's own Cuban restaurant down on South Congress. After biking past it several times as part of my Grueling Exercise Regime(tm), I thought it was time to give it a try. How is it? Quite good, actually.
We started out with the appetizer sampler, which consisted of lots of fried starch (yucca, plantain, etc.) and an empenada. It was all tasty enough that I wished we had ordered more. When the entrees came, my slow roasted pork was quite good, but Dwight's broiled pork steak was excellent. They even brought out some non-wimpy, South American style hot sauce (very hot, orange, chunky, and with no vinegar) to compliment our food. Chuck was less enthused about his chicken, so pork may be the way to go. My caramel flan was also good, and our waitress kept my endless glass of Dr Pepper well-refilled.
Worth a trip, and much better than your average TexMex fare.
Johnny Carrabba and his uncle, Damien Mandola, have a cooking show on PBS these days (at least, in our neck of the woods: check your local schedule). I watch this show. They cook all kinds of wonderful dishes based on their Italian/Texan heritage. So why aren't any of those dishes on the menu at Carrabba's?
Some of the dishes come with a side salad or soup. That's fine. These are generally slightly cheaper dishes (say, $13.95 or so). Then you have dishes that run maybe $1 or $2 more: however, you've got to pay extra for soup or salad with those. Then you've got some of the more expensive grilled/broiled meat dishes (steak, lamb chops): again, you get gouged extra for soup and salad with those. What genius came up with this pricing scheme?
Good bread and good mussels, though.
Same as it ever was. Save for the carrots in the salad, everything I had this time around was very tasty, and the alfredo sauce on my salmon special wasn't excessively cheesy. The fruit-flavored Dessert Rosa was also quite delectable. What can I say? I've never had a bad meal at any of their locations. Carrabba's works for me.
Chain seafood, but I thought it was pretty darn good. They do a decent sized fried seafood assortment: not as large as Razoo's (which they share a few tropes with, including odd prices) but not as expensive either. I like their appetizer selection, especially the sample platter that's a functional equivalent of the Chinese restaurant pu-pu tray. They do good hush puppies as well. And my judgement may be clouded some by this, but I have to admit: I'm a sucker for places that give you peanuts and let you throw the shells on the floor. (Does anyone remember the name of the burger joint in Houston that did that? (Something) Red's? Near the Ship Channel, maybe?)
They also do a good baked stuffed fish, though the portion is just a little bit smaller than I'd like (and they could dump the veggies). Also, frankly, the place can get a bit noisy for my taste: don't go here planning a quiet intimate discussion of the day's burning issues. (If you do, there's a round table near the bathrooms at the front that seems to be in a resonably quiet zone.) And it is a bit of a haul for those of us who don't live in Round Rock.
Don't confuse this, or Razoo's, or Castaways, with real Cajun. But I'm glad all three exist.
Eh. Pretty descent, and reasonably priced, chain seafood sort of place. Both Castaways and Red Lobster do a better job, but this is more than passable, if not something to get excited about. Service was good, but my salmon entree was a bit smaller than I expected (though not out of line with the price).
Pet Peeve: Guys, if you say that your sampler platter includes "crab cakes," that doesn't mean "one crab cake." If you say plural, you should provide plural. After token resistance, our waitress was happy to bring out another one, but if restaurant policy is to promise "crab cakes" and deliver "crab cake," they're engaged in what is known as "false advertising."
Rock Fish is OK, but it doesn't make me forget that Top Cat, which served better and cheaper food in the strip across I-35 from this place, is, alas, no more.
I risk being disqualified from the Food Critic Hall of Fame, but I don't get Kreuz. Yeah, the meat's okay, but I don't find it transcendent. The whole experience seems to me to be more about attitude and tradition than good eats.
Damn these people serve good BBQ, easily some of the best in Central Texas (and thus the world). My choice of which is the best seems to come down to whether I visited Kreuz Market or the Salt Lick more recently. The Salt Lick gets the nod for sauce, but damn the meat is tender at Kreuz Market. Plus the Salt Lick doesn't offer prime rib, and both it and the brisket were absolutely great, take-one-bite-and-kill-me-now-because-this-is-as-good-as-it-gets BBQ this time around. My only complaint is that (like at Cooper's in Llano), the center of the pork chop came out too dry.
Bottom line: If you like BBQ and haven't made the drive down to Lockhart to check out Kreuz Market, you're doing yourself a grave disservice.
See the logs for October of 2001.