Memories of Our Austin - Restaurants

Hippie Food

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:14:23 -0800

In early 1970, I went into the Maverick Steakhouse on South Congress, in Downtown Austin. After waiting about 15 minutes with no service, the manager came to our table and asked us to leave. He kindly explained, "Sorry, we don't serve Hippie food here."

The good old days!

Top Notch Burgers

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:32:06 -0800

Last week we lost yet another one of those things that you just rely on being there: James Stanish passed on. If your had ever eaten there, "Mr. Top Notch" surely either took your order and/or cooked your meal. Everyone seems to mention the Dazed and Confused connection with Top Notch as if that is the defining attribute. It's not. Top Notch has always been a place where you walked in and felt like family. We don't know yet whether they will re-open and try to keep going without James. I hope so but in either case we will have lost a part of our Austin family.

Update: the family has decided to re-open the restaurant and keep going. Give them your support.

Les Amis

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:10:23 -0700

As Joni Mitchell said "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone", and so I feel about Les Amis. I never really hung out there beyond the occasional lunch or afternoon beer. The crowd there was always a little too artsey, too east-coast bohemian, and the menu was expensive! Looking back though, "Les" was a cultural nugget for old Austin and especially for campus culture. It was there during the riots, during the fawning disco days, during the punk scene, and it had a place and purpose in each of those.

The film "Viva Les Amis" should be required viewing for anyone on this site. Good history and snapshots from our time gone by. Here's one for you... look familiar?

Green Pastures

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:54:35 -0700

I recently had the occasion to have dinner at Green Pastures with a fairly large group. It really brought back memories of this Grande Dame of Austin dining. The house and grounds were excellently maintained, the food was outstanding. It was a bit jarring to have a reflection of our modern times juxtaposed with the older standards: our waiter's tatoos clashed with the floral wallpaper.

However, I'm always happy to see a non-changing constant in our little town of rapid change. Green Pastures with its peacocks, its dark oak antique furniture, its grounds now in the epicenter of So. Austin gentrification does remain steady and as elegant as always.

Catfish Parlor & Coors beer

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:23:40 -0700

Trying to remember where the Catfish Parlor was heading out by Lake Travis. Remember heading out there back in 1976/7 and thinking it took hours to get there. Also - trying to recall the name of the little store (again somewhere out by Lake Travis) that was the first in the area to sell Coors beer. Hey, when you're 21 ya did stupid things like drive 45 minutes for a 6-pak!

Virginia's Cafe

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:05:12 -0700

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.

Salvation Sandwiches

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 07:57:19 -0800

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.

Uncle Nick's Pizza

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:28:32 -0800

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.

Mike's Pub

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:14:31 -0700

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.

Rita's Cantina

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:53:24 -0800

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.

Country Dinner Theatre Playhouse

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 18:42:21 -0700

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?")

Joe's Bar on East 1st

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 17:45:18 -0700

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.

The Hobbit Hole

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:06:33 -0700

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.

Mother Nature's Smoothy Shop

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 16:53:02 -0700

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...

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:21:02 -0700

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...