Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [237]
Note: Another Louie Mueller’s has opened on Manor Road in Austin. Although operated by a member of the same family, it is not officially affiliated with the original location. This is a point the folks in Taylor are quick to point out; the explanation has something to do with the sort of family feud that seems to be part and parcel of Texas barbecue culture.
Monument Café
1953 S. Austin Ave.
512–930–9586
Georgetown, TX
BLD | $$
Three meals a day are served at the Monument Café, and we recently enjoyed a swell chicken-fried Kobe steak for a mere $11 and a whole fried catfish ($14), but it is breakfast we like best. The kitchen’s migas are exemplary: eggs scrambled with cheese, diced tomatoes, and small ribbons of tortilla that variously soften and turn crisp depending on where they are in the pan, giving the dish an earthy corn flavor. On the side comes a nice red salsa to heat it up, if desired, along with grits or hash browns and a soft flour tortilla that is good for mopping and pushing food around on the plate. Pancakes and waffles are lovely, as are the big squarish biscuits; the pastry that makes us swoon is sour cream coffee cake, its top blanketed with sugar and frosting, its inside layered with local pecans.
“Our pies, cakes, and cookies are made here fresh every day,” the menu notes. “We use only the best ingredients, including real butter, yard eggs, and real whipping cream.” Of this boast, you will have no doubt if you order a piece of cream pie. Here is some of the best pie in Texas, some of the best anywhere! Chocolate pie with a toasted pecan crust is inspired and devilishly chocolaty. Coconut cream pie is equally amazing, but at the opposite end of the pleasure spectrum: angelically light, silky, fresh, and layered on a flaky gold crust.
Oh, one more thing: lemonade, limeade, and orange juice are fresh. You can watch the fruits squeezed if you sit at the counter, which is also a great place to view beautiful plates of food as they are sent out the pass-through window from the kitchen.
OST
305 Main St.
830–796–3836
Bandera, TX
BLD | $$
Even die-hard Texans have to agree that the majority of chicken-fried steaks served in restaurants are tough, spongy, and tasteless and have given the dish a bad reputation. But anyone who is a chicken-fried-steak skeptic only needs to come to Texas Hill Country to realize there is another way. Dine at OST (Old Spanish Trail) and you will understand just how wonderful a well-made chicken-fried steak can be. It is the platonic ideal of the dish, a tantalizing balance of crunch and tenderness with gravy that is cream-soft but pepper-sharp.
OST has been Bandera’s town café since 1921, and its cypress bar stools and roomy booths made of western saddles make it an especially appealing destination for hungry travelers in search of cowboy culture. One whole wall is devoted to images of John Wayne; its spur collection includes rowels dating back to frontier days; and the buffet is set out under a downsized covered wagon. The buckaroo trappings make a lot of sense in Bandera, which is surrounded by dude ranches and has proclaimed itself “The Cowboy Capital of the World.”
Otto’s Barbecue
5502 Memorial Dr.
713–864–2573
Houston, TX
BLD | $
There are two good reasons to come to Otto’s: the hamburger and the brisket. Each is served in its own half of this bifurcated restaurant that has two separate entrances and two entirely different dining areas. Up front on Memorial Drive at Otto’s burger bar, the patties are blue-plate delights: grilled thin and well, served on spongy, lightly toasted store-bought buns, with potato chips the only possible accompaniment. They are not gourmet burgers, that’s for certain, but in their less-is-more way, they are perfect.
There is no doubt about what’s special at the back entrance of Otto’s: you smell smoke and meat long before you even get to the door. Inside, the dining room seems itself to have been well-aged in smoke, its pine-paneled walls now a gallery