Austin Quick Trip

I flew out to Austin, Texas, for a couple of days last week for a little getaway. My main mission was to take it easy and eat tacos.

With multiple locations in Austin, Dallas, and Houson in store fronts and food carts, Torchy's Tacos came highly recommended. The fried avocado taco with either a flour or corn tortilla (I chose corn) was good, but did not live up to the hype. The crunch of the fried batter surrounding the avocado obscured the fresh avocado taste, and I was disappointed in what appeared to be bagged shredded cheese. A decent taco for sure, just nothing to get worked up over.

Izzoz Tacos (no picture) from a trailer just down the street (Austin is flooded with food trailer parks) was much better than Torchy's.

Lick Ice Creams is worth the hype! Inventive flavors, like beet-mint and blackberry-lemon-basil, churned from organic milk and local ingredients put Lick on par with Philly's Capogiro. The scoop of salted caramel and scoop of goat cheese-honey-thyme was fabulous.

We had no intentions of eating at Juan In A Million, a Mexican restaurant featured on Travel Channels Man vs. Food show, but it was around the corner from where we were staying (tried Airbnb for the first time, and it's pretty awesome), so moseyed over one morning. This huge plate of breakfast migas, beans, rice and tortillas was right on. Those beans definitely had lard in them, though.

 

Located in a food trailer park, Gourdough's serves huge doughnuts topped with gobs of delicious, sweet, sinful things. These doughnuts are so big and messy, you will need the fork and knife they give you. Above is the Dirty Berry, a crispy edged doughnut topped with buckets of warm chocolate sauce, grilled strawberries, and chocolate chips. Heaven!

 

I liked Gourdough's so much, I went back the next day (you can only eat one per day, they're so large) for The Puddin. Vanilla pudding, cream cheese frosting, bananas, and Nilla Wafers make this dessert banana pudding's even more sinful cousin.  

We classed it up for the boy's birthday and went to Uchiko, a "Japanese farmhouse dining and sushi restaurant" where Top Chef: Texas winner Paul Qui is executive Chef. I left the camera in my bag, but everything was beautiful, the food was great, and the service was top notch. My server even recognized that I was a vegetarian and offered to switch up some ingredients to make more of the menu accessible.

The desserts at Uchiko were the highlight of the evening, though. The tobacco-chocolate-Scotch-hucklyberry dessert blew us away. Cream infused with tobacco and Laphroag Scotch was intense, biting the tongue just like peaty Scotch, but combined with a scoop of chocolate sorbet, hucklyberry sauce, and maple budino it was manly magic.

A few more undocumented eats (more tacos and a pimento cheese sandwich!), and it was time to head back to Philly.