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The Jasmine Isle in Buda

Submitted by farnham on Sun, 04/04/2010 - 9:21am. Restaurants

Jasmine Isle in Buda - Wahoo! Long before Buda was the center of the universe and popularized on the "You Won't Believe This Sh*t!" TV crime show, with wives killin' husbands and stuff, Buda was a tiny near-ghost town relic of old time Texas.

In '72 or there abouts, a bunch of hippies who had enough money to travel to Java or some such far off hippie place (maybe India), came back to Travis County and decided (probably in the throes of some un-Christian drugs or Eastern philosophy), to start a hippie restaurant in bootiful downtown Buda, in the top floor of an old hardware store.

Whoa! Shades of Alice's 'you know what', and doggone it, the food was great, and the ambiance was straight out of Pier One (maybe The Cadeau), with tied dyed bedspreads for drapes, and giant wire spools for tables, etc.

Me and Charles John Quarto went there several times and had good food and good vibes, you know?

Just another Bozo on this bus...

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Jasmine Isle

Submitted by BadBuzz on Sat, 07/17/2010 - 11:40pm.

Seems like very few remember that great place. I loved the shrimp tempura, veggies. Christ it was great. Seemed like Buda was a ghost town back then.

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The Jasmine Isle

Submitted by duriandavid on Sat, 06/26/2010 - 4:45pm.

David Hausman
For the record, my late wife, Bonnie Sue, started The Jasmine Isle, an Indonesian restaurant in Buda in '71 or '72. She was inspired by my mother's cooking. Being Dutch, we went back a couple of generation in Indonesia. It was on the ground floor with many of the workers, etc living upstairs. Decorated with genuine Indonesian batiks and Gamelan music playing, it was very successful. Discovered by the UT crowd, there were lines every weekend. When I graduated Drama Dept. in '73, we moved to NY. She and her partner, Milton Johnson, sold it. It lingered a while then died. It was a magical time and place.
I would love to hear from any of our old friends: dhausman@verizon.net

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