Austin Found

It's early fall, and we're visiting our favorite city, Austin, Texas. The Austin City Limits music festival is at the end of the week. This will be our third visit to ACL, and this time we decided to tack on an extra week to soak up the place (and maybe scope out neighborhoods...) And although our hotel is an extended stay place with a little kitchenette, I'm taking a break from the stove for the week. But that doesn't mean we need to stop talking about the things they ate. But where to begin? There had been a steady parade of breakfast tacos, migas, queso (the one palatable use for Velveeta), of course. The delightful food at the Kerbey Lane Cafe needs a mention. We dropped in to the Alamo Draft House for a screening of the Brazilian film Estomago, which the theater pairs with a five-course meal that was suggested by foods appearing on screen. One of the course, a tasty sort of quail croquette was actually garnished with enormous fried ants, which tasted oddly of honey. But all of these are just warm up for the primary reason we like to come eat in Austin: barbecue. I'm very catholic when it comes to Q. Time spent debating the relative merits of barbecue locales is time wasted, time that could be better spent bellied up the the table gnawing on a bone. A Thin Line Between Down-Home Q and the Olive Garden What can be said about The County Line, other than, "Yawn." There are a few of these places in the Austin area, and they're safe, predictable, fun for groups--and more effective than Seconal if you really just don't want to experience much. The sign is cool, though.









County Line is known for their terrific, homemade bread! You even have to pay extra for it. Who new that it was possible to duplicate Butterkrust or Wonder at home! If you like spongy, cotton candy bread served with margarine and "honey" spread (that's corn syrup and imitation honey flavor), you go. My recent love affair with hearth breads, though, makes this seem like pretty weak soup.



And the barbecue "looks" good. But you can tell when meat has spent too much time in an industrial warmer. Blah. County Line does have a decent lineup of sides. The garlic, red-skin mashers were really very good. And that corn you seen in the background? Not nearly as bad as you might imagine, pretty far from KFC, really. The sauce? Eh. No worse than any national bottle brands.








I include the following dessert photo only under duress. If you have room for dessert, you didn't eat enough meat. But I did taste this cobbler, and it was more than fair.

Go West, Young Man!

To Llano, Texas, home of Cooper's Old Time Barbecue Pit.