Austin – Riveted

A Week in Texas

Laura Domela — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 22:40:07 +0000

By now it’s probably become apparent that we’ve moved all our boat-related updates and travel to our other site, Slowboat, and since most of the travel we do during the summer is by boat, there hasn’t been much news here on Riveted. But we spent last week on business in Texas and visited a few cool spots while we were there, so I thought I’d share!

We started in San Antonio and had a quick visit with Kevin’s mom. We usually try to take her out to dinner someplace cool when we’re in town, and since we’d gone to Cured the last two times we visited, we opted to try a new place this time — Clementine. It’s small and bright, the food was creative and delicious, and the service was spot on. I took no photos, but we’d definitely go back.

In the morning, we headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car and drove into Austin for our first set of meetings. Road Trip!!! I’d found us a little boutique hotel (which turned out to be absolutely lovely) called Austin’s Inn at Pearl.

Austin’s Inn at Pearl

The inn is actually several small buildings that each contain a few rooms, each distinct in their decoration. We were early, but were told our room was ready and directed to this room below, which turned out not to be our room, but was very cute. (It’s called the Library Room and is located on the ground floor of the main yellow building. Our room was actually the Bombay Room, and was on the second floor of the blue building behind, and was wonderful, but I took no photos of it.)

The Library Room at Inn at Pearl

For dinner, we returned to one of our longtime favorites in Austin, Uchiko. We had the chef’s tasting omakase, and again, took no photos, but it was incredible, as usual. Just check out some of the gorgeous food photos (from their website) and you’ll get the idea:

While in Austin, we also tried a new taco place, just down the street from where we stayed, called Keso’s Tacos. We shared a handful of tacos so we could try more than two. Along with the usual carnitas (great), barbacoa, and fish, they have fried avocado tacos, brisket tacos, and one of our favorites, the “Fire Chick” which has hand-battered fried chicken (fried in their Fire Red salsa), lettuce, pico de gallo, and is topped with cilantro ranch & queso, served on a flour tortilla. Delicious!

Next, it was on to Dallas on Thursday. Dallas is about a 3.5 hour drive from Austin, but we had no meetings on Thursday so we took our time and decided to stop in Waco for a little exploring. If you ever watch HGTV you probably know who Chip and Joanna Gaines are. If you don’t, they’re a couple with an extremely popular show called Fixer Upper, which has morphed into a gigantic successful brand that now has its own television network called Magnolia Network. They specialize in turning what starts out as kind of a crappy house into a farmhouse chic, magazine-photo-shoot-ready abode, and they do it well with a fairly specific aesthetic. (Shiplap!!!)

Anyway, we stopped in Waco and decided to check out the Magnolia Market at the Silos (because old silos! turned into a market!), which as it turns out, is a boutique home decor market that is also part of the Chip and Joanna Gaines thing). However, there was a big event going on there on this day and all the roads adjacent to the market were blocked off for event parking and tour buses and such. We googled and learned the event was called Silobration, which was basically an expanded home decor fair with local artisans in matching white booths lining the street out in front of the Market at the Silos, plus a handful of food trucks, and a stage with live music. We parked a few blocks away and made our way to the entrance, through security (yep, security, with scanners and everything). We walked the street/aisle flanked by several dozen booths where artisans displayed their clothing, leather bags, candles, jewelry, etc., most of them with the same color palette as everything else in the Magnolia Market. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very nice aesthetic, it’s just strange to see almost everything in the same place, from different designers, all with the same muted palette. Even the attendees had a themed similarity to them! Mostly young 30-something women, often with kids, many with long hair all curled with the same curling iron tecnique, all carrying stylish little bags with perfect little goodies inside. It was pretty great, actually.

Magnolia Market at the Silos, during Silobration 2019

Silobration, with people taking photos out front with Chip’s parents (yes, really)

Silos Baking Company, Waco TX

Silos!

We walked around for a bit, went in and out of the market, and then headed the several blocks back to our rental car and moved on.

Mural near the silos

We parked down by the river and took a walk along the waterfront, and then across the Brazos River and back via the Waco Suspension Bridge. Here’s some info on the plaque at the base:

Waco Suspension Bridge with several of the (many) bronze cattle sculptures leading up to it

The Waco Suspension Bridge was built as a way to get cattle across the Brazos River. It was part of the Chisolm Trail, used during the post-Civil War era to drive cattle overland from ranches in Texas to Kansas railheads.

View from the suspension bridge

The Brazos River appears to be home to some cool-looking water birds, some biggish fish we didn’t get more than a quick glance at as they briefly splashed the surface, as well as a whole lot of red-eared sliders (turtles!)

Red-eared sliders and birds in the Brazos River

After our walk along the river, we continued on to Dallas. We checked into our hotel and did some work for a bit, and then we headed off to another restaurant I found that sounded interesting, this one in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas. It’s called the Purepeche Room, and is in the back room of a spot called Revolver Taco Lounge.

Revolver Taco Lounge wall paintings

Revolver Taco Lounge, bathroom graffiti

The Purepecha Room has two seatings per night, holds 14 people max, and the menu is a fixed price tasting menu prepared by the chef and his mom in the kitchen that opens right into the seating area. (On this night, it was the chef’s aunt filling in for his mom while she was out of town.)

Kitchen, from our table

The place is small and quaint and feels a little like you’re hanging out in someone’s home while they cook for you. We had the early seating (6:00pm) and as it turned out we were the only ones there. The food was fantastic and I actually did manage to take some photos this time.

Chef Regino Rojas puts the final touches on what turned out to be my favorite dish of the night (ceviche, pictured below)

Ceviche with spot prawn, grapefruit, cucumber, leaves and flowers, salmon roe, fresh fish (I forgot what kind) and a little bit of puffed rice for texture. The flavors in this dish were amazing!

This was a braised lamb dish with rice and potatoes and homemade tortillas, with a delicious broth

I think this was pheasant mole, with rice and a grilled fig

Pork carnitas and quail with salsas

Everything was wonderful, and we’d definitely come back, but I’d like to see them slow down a bit. There was so much food and we were completely finished by 7:30pm. We could definitely have benefitted from a little more time to breathe between courses. Since the second seating isn’t until 8:30pm, seems like there would be enough time to spread things out a little better. Also, the waitress was exceptionally sweet, but seemed very new. She recommended we have white wine with the first four courses and red with the second four, but then recommended a bottle that was $105, which didn’t come by the glass. What would we have done with a whole bottle of wine for the first four courses that came out so rapidly? Anyway, we did some by-the-glass wines that worked out great. Dessert was wonderful (traditional flan and a small slice of local pecan pie), but the coffee!!! Oh my goodness the coffee was fabulous. Café de olla is a traditional Mexican coffee with panela (whole cane sugar) and cinnamon, cooked on the stovetop and served in an earthen clay pot. Super yum!

We walked around the neighborhood a bit after dinner, gave the guy who promised to “watch our car” a few bucks, then headed back to our hotel.

Friday after the rest of our meetings, we caught our evening flight back to Portland. We’re now home and in the middle of a gigantic purging push, which consists of cleaning out the garage, closets, and other hidey-holes, getting rid of stuff we don’t use anymore, and many, many, many trips to Goodwill. We seem to do this every time we get back from a summer on that boat (just not as well as we’re doing it now), when we are once again reminded just how little we need to be happy — in fact, it’s the opposite. The “stuff” eventually becomes the boss, and gets in the way of so many things. It feels good to be getting rid of more. I’d like to be able to relax and breathe at home as well as we are able to do on the boat!

Dude, It’s a Gas Station

Laura Domela — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:00:00 +0000

We stopped to get gas on the way from Austin to New Braunfels the other day, and Kevin says to me as he's getting out of the car: "I'll pump the gas, you check us in" [on Facebook].

Me: "Um, dude? It's a gas station. I'm not going to check us in."

We had a pretty funny exchange on Facebook about it after we got home. I posted our little bit of dialogue above, and Kevin responded: "It's a gas station" could be counted as an understatement. We were at the world's LARGEST gas station (with 60 pumps). They claim to be the world's largest convenience store as well, at over 67,000 square feet, it is 20-times the size of a 7-11 (more like a large WalMart). With 80 soda dispensers, 31 cash registers, 23 flavors of fudge, and 84 toilets… 'It's a gas station' indeed!"

Where I then added: "Ooooooh, 84 toilets. Might have been worth checking in for huh? No."

——————

We'd been hearing about this "Bucky's" place between Austin and San Antonio. Turns out it's not "Bucky's" but Buc-ee's. Apparently it's a bigass gas station/convenience store that does advertising along the lines of Wall Drug. HUGE convenience store. 20 gas pumps or something (okay, 60, whatever). Gas is 10 cents a gallon cheaper than the neighbor gas station. (Oh, and Buc-ee is a giant beaver.)

Kevin mentioned it to his mom on the phone before we left Austin and she sounded kinda shruggy about it: "It's a gas station, isn't it? There's one on the way to Houston, right?" We kinda didn't think we'd stop but when we were about to pass it we had half a tank and decided we might as well fill up and see just how huge this place was.

Glorious, isn't it?

I still don't really see the appeal. Maybe if you're coming from the west and you've been driving through one little crappy tiny West Texas town after another (separated by miles and miles and miles of flat nothingness between each town), this place would feel like a joyous oasis filled with unicorns and rainbows and calorie-free candy and OMG would you look at all them gas pumps??? But we came from Austin — Austin, where there are stores and stuff.

Not Enough Time in Austin

Laura Domela — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:43:37 +0000

Last night we were originally planning to go have some fancy barbeque at Lambert's, but at the last minute we changed our minds and decided to go to Uchiko instead. Holy crap. What an incredible meal. Chef Tyson Cole won the 2011 James Beard Award for Best Chef – Southwest, and Executive Chef Paul Qui won the 2012 James Beard Award for Best Chef – Southwest. (Paul was also the winner of last season's Top Chef.) We had the chef's tasting menu and everything was delicious, creative, amazing. If you like (contemporary) Japanese…highly recommended. Menu is here, but nothing you read there can really describe how incredible each bite tastes. The tasting menu is 10 courses of small plates to share. Our two favorite things were the koviche (fresh diver scallop, tomatillo, kalamata, black lime — OMG how do they make ingredients taste like that together???) and a wagyu beef (smoked for three days) nigiri with some fresh Japanese wasabi on top. Perfection.

After dinner we went for a much needed walk. We walked down to Zilker Park and then crossed over Barton Springs Road and walked back past the RV park to Lamar, turned left, crossed over the river Lady Bird Lake and then walked back to the Airstream at Pecan Grove. There's some great neon on Barton Springs Road — my iPhone did a surprisingly good job capturing it, don't you think?

These guys have a bit of a kerning problem:

Day before yesterday for lunch and then again that night we visited with a long-time friend of Kevin's who lives in Austin (Hi Tom!). We went to dinner with his family and had some delicious Mexican pastries for dessert at their beautiful home. Here's the view from their deck:

We're heading to New Braunfels today, but we might have to come back to Austin because we didn't even scratch the surface of the list of restaurants we wanted to try.

Pecan Grove RV Park, Austin

Laura Domela — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:45:00 +0000

This is a funky little RV park. Love it. The location is perfect and the vibe is perfectly Austin. Mostly monthly renters, but there are 10 spots they rent nightly for travelers. No website, but here's a little more info about the place.