18th May, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Austin Diner and Jollyville Bar (formerly the Jollyville Bar and Grill) located at 11835 Jollyville Rd in North Austin is somewhat near my house and has a decent veggie burger and wonderful sweet potato fries. 
It has a little of a hole in the wall feel, but they have a good selection of beers and it has a nice patio. For vegetarian fare though, it’s middle of the road, as really the veggie burger is the only option unless you ask for something not on the menu. Not all restaurant review can be glowing though, can they? I give it 3 stars.
11th May, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I’ve already written about the Jalopy here, but had another delightful vegetarian sandwich there today, so thought I would share this pic of the beautiful caprese wrap I had:
Warm fresh made bread, a garlicky pesto sauce that hit the spot, and a lot of fresh, soft mozzarella.
6th April, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Several weeks ago (during SxSW actually), I stopped by the newly re-opened Hickory Street Bar and Grill on Congress (800 Congress Ave.) I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the restaurant has a new menu, new interior, cute veggie garden along the patio, and now serves only local, organic food. It’s a really nice place to sit on the patio for a quick lunch while watching the bustle of downtown, and it’s nice to have more environmentally friendly choices in this area of town. At lunch there are no waiters, you just place your order up front and wait till they call your number, and then take your food to any open table, so I think that makes the whole process a lot faster for getting lunch if you have a short lunch hour.
new interior
I had the vegetarian chickpea chili. It tasted really healthy, maybe like something my Mom would make. It was substantial but needed a little more flavor or more cheese on it. If I made this at home I would be delighted by it, but I’m American and I like to eat something a little more unhealthy tasting when I go out to eat. It was served with some bread, which again was good by eating-at-home standards, but for eating-out standards, it needed a tad more salt baked into the dough, rather than salt just sprinkled on the outside after it was baked – it was a little bland. But still good. So far this place has 3 out of 5 stars on Yelp since it re-opened. I would give it another try and hope it stays open this time, because it is a nice place to have a relaxing lunch.
23rd March, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I checked out the Jalopy this week for the first time and think it will become one of my new favorite lunch spots. Located on the corner of 15th and San Antonio, the Jalopy is a cute little food cart under a big shade tree with plenty of seating. There were several vegetarian entrees – I had the vegan Thai wrap, which was comprised of some shredded veggies with a spicy peanut sauce in a fresh-made wrap. The Jalopy makes all of their own bread, and that was my favorite part of the meal. My friend had the caprese sandwich, which looked really good (she said it was good too). They were each $6 – a pretty good price for downtown and a large sandwich. The owner was really nice to us, our sandwiches were made right away, and they have three more vegetarian sandwiches for us to tryout. I will be back!
16th March, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Lats weekend I went with my hubby to Hai Ky on Spicewood Springs for an early dinner. This is the same location where Triumph Cafe used to be. The Yelp reviews aren’t that great, but I thought the food was pretty good. I had the Bun Goi Cuon tofu, which is sauteed tofu with carrots, cucumbers, peanuts, cilantro, and peanut sauce, and I thought all the veggies were nice and fresh and the tofu was cooked well. My husband had the pho, and thought it was good. The service wasn’t spectacular, but the place seemed pretty clean, the servings were large, and the food was typical Americanized Vietnamese food. A good choice for vegetarian meals if you want a lot of options, as there were probably 8 or so tofu meals. 
9th March, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I have found a restaurant to add to my top 10 favorite restaurants! My husband and I checked out Casa Colombia last weekend and both really enjoyed our meals. My husband thought the food was a little bland (also a complaint of his when we actually visited Colombia last January) but I guess I enjoy simple foods more than him, because I thought mine was great and I loved eating the leftovers.
Casa Colombia is located on East 7th Street, not too far past 35. The atmosphere was relaxed and unassuming, with minimal decorations on the wall. I thought the waiters were all really friendly even though we came in close to closing time (the close at 7 on Sundays), and we didn’t wait long for our food.
To start I had the abarrajado, described at sweet fried plantains stuffed with mozzarella cheese. At $3.50, I thought it was a good price for an appetizer. It was huge! The pic is just of half of it!
For dinner, I had a cheese arepa (a corn meal patty filled with cheese) and the vegetable plate ($7.99), which was an assortment of veggies cooked in criollo sauce, served with black beans, rice, and plantains. The vegetables were really good, and the rice was cooked to perfection (rice I could just eat by itself). The purpose of “restaurant review Friday” is to highlight either a restaurant that uses local ingredients or is in some way sustainable, and/or a restaurant that serves good vegetarian food. This falls into the latter of those categories, and this was one of the best vegetarian dishes I’ve had in a long time. I guess a similar vegetarian dish I’ve eaten a lot of recently that I could compare this to would be vegetable tacos or fajitas, but it was nice to have something other than tortillas as my “bread” ( the arepa), the plantains were something different, and rather than sometimes greasy rice and re-fried beans, the white rice and black beans were a nice change. Plus the veggies weren’t just grilled, as they often are with veggie tacos or fajitas, they were simmered in a tomato based sauce first. Really good!
17th February, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to the Natural Gardener, located in Southwest Austin, to pick up some soil for our garden and some plants. It’s pretty out-of-the-way for us, so we decided to get dinner in the area on the way back. On a whim we stopped at Jack Allen’s Kitchen, which we’d never heard of before. The parking lot was very full for Saturday at 5:00 PM, so I assumed it was going to be filled with families and maybe some older people, serving uninteresting food. I was wrong (about the food). It was AMAZING! I loved it and I’m going to go back there every time I need to go to the Natural Gardener and combine it all into one exciting trip.
Not only was the food amazing though, Jack Allen’s Kitchen uses local ingredients whenever possible. (You can read more about that here.) I thought the menu was very unique with a lot of choices, and the prices were very reasonable.
To start, we were given complimentary homemade pimento cheese spread with crackers, a very nice touch.
Then we ordered the blue crab gratin, described as crab baked with artichoke hearts, spinach, Parmesan and grilled ciabatta. It was very good although one of the more expensive appetizers ($10.99).
My husband had the Country Club Fancy Chicken Salad, described as being composed of grilled achiote chicken, figs, pears, candied walnuts, crumbled bleu cheese and champagne vinaigrette ($11.99). It was a really fresh, large salad and I especially liked the use of figs.
I had the veggie and portobello South Texas Taco Platter ($9.99), which was also delicious. The tacos seemed homemade, the portobello was really well cooked (not rubbery at all), and the salsa and rice were tasty.
Finally, we had an amazing dessert that I can’t remember the name of, but it was some kind of chocolate cookie pie with nuts. Not too sweet and really good!
The service was excellent, the place was really clean and efficient, and it had a great atmosphere that would be great for a romantic date or going with a family. And with wonderful LOCAL food at reasonable prices, I will be going back again for sure!
13th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
On Monday I stopped by Barley Swine with Carsi after work for dinner. Located at 2024 S. Lamar, Barley Swine is owned by the same person who owns the Odd Duck trailer also on South Lamar. (Right now the Odd Duck trailer is closed and may or may not re-open in the Spring. I really really hope it reopens! Read more about that here.) While it was open, I had stopped by the Odd Duck trailer for dinner at least 5 times, and LOVED it, so I was excited to try Barley Swine.
Barley Swine was similar to Odd Duck’s food offerings in many ways. As with the Odd Duck, local ingredients are the focus, and plates are rather small – you’re encouraged to get 2-3 plates per person in order to be full at the end of a meal. An obvious dissimilarity between the two though is that Barley Swine is a sit-down restaurant, while Odd Duck was a trailer with cute outdoor seating and BOB. Barley Swine was cozy inside and a nice low-key place to go with friends. You’re seated at cocktail tables or long 6 person tables, so if you go with a date you may end up sitting at a 6 person table next to a stranger, but that makes it easier to see what other people in the restaurant are ordering.
We each had a beer, and I don’t know much about beer but whatever I had was from Austin and came in a cute glass. The waitress was extremely knowledgeable about beers, and very friendly and prompt overall.
For dinner, I had a shrimp dish that, unfortunately isn’t on the on-line menu now and I can’t remember what all was in it. It was very fancy but, as I expected, was rather small. I think it was about $10. Here’s a poor quality picture:
I also had the spiced goat cake, which came with some delicious cauliflower, for $12. The goat cake was interesting and this plate was more substantial. Here a picture of that dish (in the background are Carsi’s chickpea fritters):
Since Carsi’s a vegetarian and I wanted to try the max number of plates (I knew she would share with me) I ordered non-vegetarian plates although normally I would be drawn to the vegetarian dishes here. Carsi’s fritters were tasty but I wasn’t blown away. They cost $8. She also had the beet salad, which although this is a bad picture of it, was the best of the four dishes in my opinion:
This dish had tasty little roasted beets, fresh cheese curds, salted pistachio, grilled fennel, and some greens that I think had been baked because they were very crisp and delicious. It was a really nice flavor combination and was worth the $8.
I appreciate that Barley Swine uses local ingredients, and I appreciate that they serve unique and interesting dishes, so I will probably go back there with my husband sometime soon. It’s just that after being spoiled by the Odd Duck trailer, which had pretty similar-type dishes but at a noticeably lower price (and the lower price makes sense as a trailer isn’t going to have the same type of over-head costs as a sit-down restaurant), it seemed slightly over-priced. But everything we had was good and it was fun to try something new and know we were eating local food. For a special night out, give it a try!
6th January, 2012 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
On Monday I had a great time checking out Elizabeth Street Cafe for the first time. I don’t really follow the Austin food scene very closely, and didn’t realize that this restaurant, owned by the same chef who brought us Lambert’s and Perla, had just opened, although I did immediately recognize that an hour wait for a table at 2PM on a Monday seemed unusual. After putting our name in for a table and doing some research online about the place, I was a little hesitant because even though people seemed eager to get into the restaurant, the reviews on yelp were so mixed. But my husband and I wanted to try something new, so we walked along South First St for a while to kill time while we waited for a table to open up.
After our wait for a table, things went pretty smoothly with the wait staff, which was impressive considering how recently the cafe opened. Ushered to our table, I had the weird feeling I was in the old building that Bouldin Creek Coffee house used to be in. Turns out I was right, although they’ve spruced the place up so much that the formerly quaint/dilapidated coffee house was hardly recognizable at all. They’ve really decorated it well and I would go back just because it’s so pretty. But on to the vegetarian food!
As you can see from their menu, there’s some vegetarian choices but not a huge amount — the French-Vietnamese cuisine is fairly pork focused. But they did have a few things to choose from, and I picked the #49, roasted mushroom and grilled tofu bun. At $12 it was a little overpriced, but the veggies in it were extremely fresh, the presentation was done well, and I really enjoyed my meal. For dessert we had the caramelized banana pots de creme. At $8 I thought it was also slightly overpriced, but it was really delicious and I would get it again, so maybe the price isn’t that far off. All in all it was a really great meal and a nice, memorable way to spend the New Year’s holiday with my husband. Probably not the best place to go when trying to help the environment by eating meat less often (the best of pork smells wafting towards you from every corner), but still some pretty good vegetarian choices.
30th December, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Last week I tried out the grilled tofu at Lavaca Teppan. Located at 1712 Lavaca Street, this modernly decorated and very clean restaurant is a nice addition to that area of town. This was probably the fourth time I’ve been to Lavaca Teppan since it opened, and I’ve always thought the service has been excellent, and the food tasty. Not the best Japanese food in Austin, but still very good. They have a small menu, most of the items are a meat that has been grilled with vegetables and served over good sticky white rice. On my recent visit I tried the grilled tofu and vegetables, and wasn’t disappointed. At first it tasted like it may have been a little too salty, but they served the dish with a delicious ginger sauce that, once poured over my meal, balanced out (or overpowered) the saltiness and really made the meal. I would be happy just eating a bowl of rice and that ginger sauce, it’s that good. It was very filling but I didn’t feel like I had overeaten after the meal, so I think in the future I’ll stick with this dish when I visit. All in all, a great vegetarian meal!
9th September, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
My husband took me to Foreign & Domestic earlier this week for a special night out, and I really enjoyed it. I had never heard of it before but a friend recommended it to him and I’m glad he did. It’s located on 53rd Street and it’s a smaller place with very charming decor that reminds me a little of a West Elm catalog. It’s a little hipster-ish, a little informal, and has a very good menu. Earlier this summer I wrote a rant about how after coming back from a weekend in Portland, where I ate at several amazing, innovative, and reasonably priced restaurants, I was underwhelmed by the Austin food scene. Interestingly enough, Foreign & Domestic is run by a couple who spent several years in Portland before relocating to Austin. The menu did remind me of Portland because it did have several items that sounded unique and interesting, but the prices were a little high compared to what I saw in Portland. Still, it was a reasonable price range for Austin and we had a very good meal -I would definitely go back again.
We started with the fruit and cheese plate, which had some fresh fruit (blueberries, peaches, maybe nectarines) in a thin and tasty basil sauce, served with a couple of fried squash blossoms and some ricotta cheese. It was $8 which I thought was a good price. This is not a good picture, but the presentation was really well done.
It’s not listed on the online menu now, but I had the priest strangler pasta. A funny name, but basically “priest strangler” noodles are just a type of pasta, as our waitress explained, which you can read about here. The pasta tasted homemade, was delightfully chewy in a perfectly cooked way, and had a simple tomato, basil, and truffle oil sauce on it. I LOVE truffle oil and this was hands down one of the best pasta dish I’ve ever eaten. It was a great vegetarian meal! But $16 seemed a little high.
They also had another vegetarian entree called “summer squash tofu” that I’d like to try next time. Check it out!
29th July, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I don’t have a restaurant review for this week, but I did revisit East Side Cafe on Monday (which I’ve already reviewed here) and man, was it good. The service, which is usually good but can be hit or miss, was excellent for our visit, and our food was fresh, local, and exciting. I tried the fresh vegetable plate appetizer, and had a side of eggplant gratin. It was the most delicious healthy meal I’ve ever had at a restaurant. To clarify, it wasn’t the most delicious meal I’ve ever had, but of healthy meals, it was the most delicious I’ve had at a restaurant.
The eggplant gratin was some baked eggplant with cheese (well, that part probably wasn’t extremely healthy) and I made the vegetable plate my main course. The plate came with fresh, raw okra, string beans, cucumber, green squash, and green bell pepper. It was served with 1 hard-boiled egg, a small egg salad, some anchovy butter, a side of sea salt, and some cilantro lime dressing. It was very healthy but still managed to be filling since it came with the egg sides, and was a nice, light meal after another long, hot Austin day. The presentation was nice, the price was reasonable ($8), and it wasn’t your run of the mill “healthy” option, which is usually a disappointing salad at many restaurants. Great work, East Side Cafe!
15th July, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
Two weeks ago I attended a birthday celebration at 34th Street Cafe on a Wednesday night. Located on West 34th Street near the hospital, 34th Street Cafe is a cool little spot serving local food (* maybe serving local food – I think it’s local but I’m not sure- more on that below). Wednesday nights they have 1/2 prices bottles of wine, which made it great for a birthday party. We came with a group of probably 25 people, and for a small restaurant they handled the group very well. We were there a long time, waiting for our food and then waiting for our checks, but that’s to be expected with that large of a group. Overall, the service was good and our food was fresh.
However, maybe because I had just returned from a weekend in Portland, where everywhere you go the food is so delicious/innovative/unique for reasonable prices, I thought the prices at 34th Street Cafe were a little high for what we got.
To start, my husband and I shared one of their seasonal salads – it’s not on the menu so I can’t say how much it costs – but it was thinly shaved pieces of watermelon served with some feta cheese and maybe a balsamic sauce. It was nothing special. A salad that steps outside of the traditional leaf lettuce is a little hard to find in Austin, so I WANTED to like the salad, and with those ingredients, it could have been very tasty, but it was just meh.
For dinner I ordered the vegetable plate for $15. It came with some brown rice that was a little overcooked, some tasty little asparagus spears that had been grilled, some grilled fennel that was a little hard to eat (chewy/fibrous but maybe that’s the nature of fennel?), and some wonderful cooked broccoli in a garlicky butter sauce. Overall it was good, but not worth $15 – nothing magical enough was going on on my plate to justify the cost.
My husband had the panko crusted chicken picatta served with rice for $17. It was delicious, but not traditional picatta. The rice was salty and buttery, like maybe it had been cooked in chicken stock. The chicken had been fried and was very juicy and melt-in-your-mouth, but the plate didn’t have any tart lemony flavor that picatta is expected to have. It was very good, just again, a little overpriced.
*Now about the local food part – several reviews on Yelp noted that the ingredients used are local, but I’m not seeing that on their website so either they don’t advertise it or don’t make it obvious enough on the website. I would certainly not mind paying $15 for a veggie plate and $17 for friend chicken if it’s local, and even better if it’s organic, but for run of the mill ingredients, I was a little underwhelmed, as M Kors would say.
Also, speaking of Yelp, many of the reviews on there of 34th Street Cafe are very good, so don’t be dissuaded from trying it out based on my review – like I said, I was just coming off the high of 3 and a half glorious days of Portland culinary prowess, so maybe I was just imposing higher than normal expectations.
1st July, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Last Friday for lunch I checked out Coco’s Cafe on the UT campus (right on Guadalupe) and had a delicious vegetarian lunch! I really enjoyed the green onion pie I had and the peppercorn tofu with rice, topped off with a chilled and sugary thai ice tea. It was a coma-inducing meal that I ate very quickly. I appreciated that the tofu was not overcooked and I will be going back again for more very soon! And it was nice to see a good amount of choices for vegetarian meals.
peppercorn tofu
green onion pie
Very tasty!
17th June, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
Yesterday I went to Phara’s Mediterranean Cuisine for a friend’s birthday, and it was really good! Probably not THE best Mediterranean food I’ve ever had, but still pretty high up there and also earning extra points for being such a unique spot with excellent service. (We probably had a group of 25 people there, and our food came out quickly and we were well taken care of by friendly staff.)
They had 4 vegetarian entrees, and of those, I chose “Tenzin’s Famous Aloo Channa” ($14), which was recommended as the best vegetarian dish of those 4. The menu describes it as a ”combination of potatoes, garbanzo beans and coconut milk together with a zesty blend of curries” served with couscous and basmati rice. It was very delicious and I had no leftovers. It reminded me a little of Indian food, maybe because of the coconut milk, but it was less spicy while still having a lot of flavor.
Phara’s had a belly dancer while we were there, so that was fun to watch as we sat outside in their expansive patio area. Phara’s also is BYOB, which is great, especially with a large group of people. We had a great experience there and I would highly recommend trying it out for a vegetarian meal, or for your next large get together.
And no restaurant review on this blog is complete without a poor quality phone picture of what I ate, so here it is! It was really good!
25th May, 2011 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
The Austin Chronicle released their 2011 list of best restaurants last week, including the readers poll results, which had a few vegetarian related categories:
Runners-up
Veggie Heaven, Titaya’s Thai Cuisine
Honorable Mention
The Steeping Room, Uchi, Koriente Restaurant & Tea House
Runner-up
24 Diner
Honorable Mention
Bartlett’s, Hopdoddy Burger Bar, Hut’s Hamburgers
Runners-up
CoCo’s Cafe, Veggie Heaven
Honorable Mention
Casa de Luz, Counter Culture
Check out the full list here!
6th May, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a restaurant review, mainly because we don’t eat out as often since starting to buy our weekly veggies from Johnson’s Backyard Garden – it takes a lot of focus for 2 people to eat the quantity of veggies they deliver each week, and would be even harder to do if we were eating out all the time. (I’m not complaining though – we’re still really enjoying getting a CSA box.) But this week I picked up a taco from the Coreanos truck to supplement my lunch-time leftovers. I tried one of the tofu tacos, and man was it a delicious vegetarian meal!
I felt like there was a lot of attention to detail in this little guy. The spicy kimchi sauce, the lime wedge, the little sesame seeds sprinkled over it – really tasty! Plus the people working at the truck were very nice and friendly and even though it was fairly busy, we didn’t have to wait more than 7 minutes for our food. This little taco was $2.50, and I would for sure need at least 2 tacos plus a side dish if this was all my lunch consisted of, but like I said, I ate this in addition to my leftovers and was satisfied with the serving.
If you want to check it out, first look at their website and see where there truck will be – it changes often. I’ve had many friends check this place out and all have loved it, and I was not disappointed!
*Update: I had to edit this page from when this entry was first posted because I initially got the name of the restaurant wrong. Sorry!
22nd December, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
I’ve been doing a poor job of keeping up with restaurant review Friday (and not for want of eating my way across Austin, which I’ve been doing plenty of.) Mostly I’ve just been really busy and haven’t had the time to post pictures and all that. So I thought I would share a couple of pics from my recent visit to Mr. Natural. If you’ve never been there, Mr. Natural is located on east Cesar Chavez (1901 E. Cesar Chavez to be exact), and is a great choice if you’re in the area. Their website says:
In a simple, relaxed environment located just 5 minutes from downtown Austin, Mr. Natural is a natural foods restaurant, bakery, juice bar and health food store all rolled into one. Our award-winning vegetarian restaurant offers non-dairy, wheat-free, vegan or vegetarian food using all natural ingredients in unique Mexican vegetarian dishes. Mr. Natural caters, makes it to go, we can even mail it to you. When it comes to Mr. Natural’s Bakery, you probably won’t find a healthier selection of vegetarian baked goods anywhere. Come check out our selection of natural drinks, meat-substitute entrees, vitamin and mineral supplements and other herbal products in our Health Food Store. Mr. Natural also offers yoga and meditation classes in our Meditation Room.
From the description, you may think it’s run by/filled with stuck-up, self-righteous hippies, but nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve always found the people there to be very down-to-earth, regular, friendly people. On my recent visit I grabbed a sweet potatoe empanada, which was delicious – the dough was surprisingly sweet and the whole thing was very filling. I also grabbed a gingerbread man which was also tasty although I’m partial to my own gingerbread recipe.
They had a lot of fresh salads, and also some great pastries for Christmas gifts, like fuit cake and cookie packages. I saw these breads which looked good.
Check it out!
15th October, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
A few weeks ago I went to Jo’s Coffee House on 2nd Street and had a veggie dog. It was surprisingly delicious because it had so many extras on top. 
It’s not a very good pictures, but you may be able to make out the edge of the hot dog in the bottom right hand corner. Mostly there’s just a lot of relish and cheese on there, for a tasty and filling meal. I can’t remember the price but I do remember thinking it was reasonably priced. I usually don’t like fake meat, but I would get this again for sure.
24th September, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments
Last weekend I had an enjoyable dinner at the North location of Kerbey Lane. I’ve been to the Northwest location several times, and to the campus location a couple of times and I’ve usually have a pretty good experience. Kerbey Lane is listed in the Austin Environmental Directory as one of a handful of restaurants in Austin that uses locally grown food, and if you are looking for something vegetarian, they have a lot of choices (in addition to great non-vegetarian dishes.) The food is inexpensive, and while often compared to Magnolia Cafe, I have to say I like Kerbey Lane better. However, as with many Austin restaurants, the service is not always great and that’s my biggest complaint.
Last week when I went though, the service was good, and so was my dinner. We ordered the queso, which was tasty.
My husband had a salad and I ordered a tomato pie from the seasonal menu. I was expecting something with a flakey crust and was a little disappointed when my meal arrived and saw what looked to be a piece of bread topped with tomato and cheese.
The presentation wasn’t great, but my disappointment ended there. I don’t know how they made it, but it was so delicious I would like to go again tonight and pick up another. The crust was soft and rich, the tomatoes were well seasoned, I didn’t even notice the olives on it and I hate olives, and the cheese was melted and a little tangy. It was so simple but it was wonderful.
I’ve also had their pancakes (always good) and salads (always fresh). So check it out if you haven’t yet!