I used to love to go to Virginia's Cafe down on S. 1st about half way btwn Barton Springs and Ben White. Around about 74-75 used to eat some of the best chicken fried steak, pork chops etc. with the usual vegetables; Virginia, whom was very old, would cook it, serve it and run the cash register. You could get along just fine as long as you didn't try to strike up a conversation with her. She was damned busy and did not mind telling you so. So just eat your damned food or talk to someone else.

When I first moved to Austin, one of my best friends was a vegetarian. Since I was new in town, I followed him around for awhile. That meant eating vegetarian meals, something very new to the Texas carnivore. There were a couple of places that I recall but mostly it was the "avocado and sprouts on whole wheat" that we would get at Salvation Sandwiches. That was the complete experience: the hippie food, the hippie food vendors, the hippie mentality. All in all, a very proper lesson in the culture of my new home.

One of the best pizzas (and environments) that I’ve ever had. We had moved out to Fritz Hughes Park (below the low water crossing at the dam) for a little over a year and a half. Nick’s was on 2222 shortly before you got to 4 points on the right. Small, non-descript location. He was from somewhere up north and made the best thin crust pizza that I’ve ever had to this day. It was like going in to see a friend at that place. He greeted everyone like an old friend and really wanted to know how you were doing.
Being around 14 years old at the time, these are some of the memories that shaped my individuality. This was around 1979.

Some things, thankfully, never change. Mike's Pub has resisted change for about 40 years. Way back when downtown was strictly for day-time inhabitants (well before 6th Street as we know it), Mike's was in that building that looks like a parking garage, up those stairs that seem to lead to nowhere good and serving up cold beer and burgers. None of that has changed. In fact, Mike's still seems like it's known to a small group of Austin cognoscenti... just like in the old days.

You can go in for a beer that's served in the same fishbowl glass as Jake's. You can review the strata of calendars, funny beer company swag, the old-school bar equipment, etc., that only come with years of accumulation in an Austin bar.

Most importantly, you can squint your eyes and see the way things used to be.

The food was forgettable, but not the red wine served in greasy plastic tumblers, nor certainly Rita herself, in her Carmen Miranda fruit-topped hat and muu muu. The chain-link fence looking out onto 6th only added to the mystique.

The Country Dinner Playhouse was out past Balcones Research Centre (I live in NZ, and looking on Google Maps makes me think it has a newer name???) on Hwy 1325. Down a hill and cross the railroad tracks, then up the hill - and the theatre was on your right.

In 1972 or so I lived on a 40 acre property just past there, same side of the road. There had been a geodesic dome making construction company there, and they left the skeletons of several domes that made it stand out a bit...

And I worked at the Country Dinner Theatre as a cleaner/dishwasher. At one time there were 4 or 5 of us, then they cut it back to two. We'd get there about 10pm, as the show finished, and bus, wash, setup and drink wine until near dawn. For me, it was just a walk across the field to get home then.

KOKE was just starting to have some great programming back then, and we'd get to listen to Ramblin' Jack Elliot's song about New Orleans just about every night ("Did you ever stand and shiver, just because you were lookin' at a river?")

Before 1st Street was Caesar Chavez, there was plain old east first. There were several eastside spots that were already "famous"... that is, known to exist by folks on the west side of town. Places like El Azteca, Hernandez, Cisco's. My favorite was Joe's Bar on east 1st. Joe's was a beer bar with a trailer out back serving food. Cheap, cold beer and fresh tacos are a great combination. My favorite tacos were picadillo: a large tortilla filled with extremely spicy beef and topped with a handfull of french fries right out of the fryer.

Joe's tacos were legendary for their "hotness" due to chiles and spice. So much so, it was sport for the regulars to watch for and ridicule the white boys' melt-down after an order of three. I held my own but a few Lone Star's were needed... I felt that the regular crowd approved of that technique.

Back when "The Lord of the Rings" had anything nothing more than minimal popularity, let me see now: 1971 or so it would have been, there was a really nice restaurant down near Rio Grande and about 5th St.

I can remember bicycling down there from the University area in the late, late nights for coffee and desserts.

I don't think the place was around all that long - the food business is like that, I guess - but I remember the building as a converted grand old house, lit up brightly in an otherwise dark and quiet neighbourhood.

Well, smoothies haven't always existed, have they?

Back in the late 60s (I'm remembering either 1969 or 1970?), they were really something new and different, and there was a place somewhere about 16th or 17th, maybe in the San Antonio to Rio Grande area called Mother Nature's Smoothy Shop. I'm sure they sold things other than smoothies, but that was their specialty. I remember it as not much more than a small kitchen and I remember more of the yard than any inside eating place. Anybody remember the place?

Sattva was a collective food serving place - a co-op of sorts, I guess.

It started sometime in early 1975, I think, and was first located in the back of a church hall in the 2100 block of San Antonio. Meals were vegetarian, outrageously cheap, fresh and tasty.

At some point, Sattva moved somewhere further up the Drag, again in some sort of either community or church hall.

Always a friendly atmosphere, and menus often dedicated to particular ethnicities or particular interests of the people who happened to be cooking that day...