Get Stuffed: Eatin' in Austin
Well, okay, so this may not be so helpful to residents of The City, but considering how many people we've run into from home and folks around these parts who've spent time in San Fran, consider this an appraisal of one of the best truck stops on the artsy-fartsy superhighway. We mean, if you're stranded somewhere in America's urban archipelago away from home, you'd be hard pressed to find a better island than Austin, though the surrounding sea is deep and wide, to say the least.
Yesterday, realizing that we had to get our column up and didn't have any San Francisco joints on hand to post on, we took a recommendation from our host and hit up "Las Manitas" on the east side of Congress street between second and third, downtown. Trust us -- our hopes for finding something cheap along Congress was running out. High-end steakhouses and sushi joints and junky fast food were the order of the day (we will never eat at Chipotle, thank you very much). So we called our friend and got the details. We were not disappointed.
Las Manitas looks like a funky, artsy dinner, but is really a top notch Mexican cafe. While we were eating, batch upon batch of music fliers for the upcoming festivities were being carefully placed next to the register -- so if you're in town looking for the next Ozomatli, this would probably be a good place to browse for event announcements in the Chronicle, pick up some fliers, and steel your stomach for an afternoon of drinking (they start early around these parts).
First rule of ordering enchiladas: don't order them unless they're a special, or the restaurant is known for them. Most places keep them frozen, steam-thaw, and then cover with tomato sauce base and broil. See lasagna.
We ordered the Enchiladas Morelianas ($5.75 + tax) from the specials board, but if that's not your region of choice, you can order your enchiladas Michoacana or Tejano style. The touch from morelia must have been the deep, rich, dark mole sauce. Oh lord. You can keep your perigouts -- we'll opt for the sublime complexity of a mole every time. We chose the ground beef (we've been going with the beef option every time -- we figure it'll be extra fresh) over the stewed chicken, had a coke, and read Molly Ivins' column. She had appeared on Air America the day before as a guest of Al Franken during a special Austin broadcast of the O'Franken Factor.
Today we woke up late and came along for a ride to lunch with our hosts, who were actually more hungover than we were for a change. While we joked that the cheap eats seemed to range "from Tex to Mex," we'd actually noticed a relative abundance of creole and soul food joints, especially on the east side of 35. We do have a soft spot for southern comfort, and were happy to heading to Gene's, a creole sandwich and fry joint.
Gene's sports rotating daily specials for each day of the week. Today's was Spaghetti Casserole with green beans and potato salad or the chicken fried chicken (as opposed to southern fried chicken -- it all has to do with the specific frying technique and oil used). We opted instead for the oyster poboy, because we always opt for the oyster poboy when on offer (there's a good one at Pier 23 on the Embarcadero, but it's a tad pricey). French roll, lettuce, tomato, mayo and two handfuls of fried oysters. A little louisiana hot sauce and we were in heaven. With the all-you can drink iced tea (sweet or otherwise), we got out for a scoch under ten bucks. Luckily our bro picked up the tab, because even eating cheap doesn't always help when you're broke and on the road.