I like the stromboli, and I'm a bigger fan of the thin crust pizza than Lawrence is.
My problem is, unless I'm eating one of those two things, there's no reason to go to the Brick Oven: the rest of the (limited) non-pizza menu doesn't appeal to me. And if I want thin crust pizza, I actually prefer Reale's, not that much further up the road.
So why bother?
Having tried the calzone at The Brick Oven, I have much the same reaction I had to their pizza at another location: adequate, but undistinguished. Both struck me as "bready" and not terribly flavorful. Likewise, the mozzarella garlic bread was good but not outstanding, and the Caesar salad was pretty mediocre. Unfortunately, the $1 house salad option wasn't available the way it was for other entrees, a rather short-sighted policy. Also, the menu seemed very limited, leaning heavily on the baked side of Italian cooking.
On the plus side, the service and decor were good, and Dwight's stromboli tasted a bit better than my calzone. Also, I rather liked the smoky aroma the restaurant's namesake gave the place. Too bad the taste didn't live up to the smell.
Though The Brick Oven is not a bad restaurant, it's not a terribly compelling one either. My advice would be to drive a few miles up the road to Reale's, where they offer much better pizza and Italian dishes (and a wider variety to boot).
No conspiracy this week: Lawrence was doing his semi-annual Turkey City Writers Workshop and Party thing. Again.
Where were the blowfish? They promised me blowfish!
What's that?
Oh.
Never mind.
Anyway...the idea of a new Cajun place fills me with excitement: especially one within reasonable driving distance of my office, and with good initial word of mouth on austin.food.
After dining at Hoody's, though, I have to say it was a qualified disappointment.For starters, the menu seemed somewhat limited: you could get boiled shrimp, but not crawfish? The main concentration seemed to be on po'boys and subs: there's nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't what I expected to drive out to Oak Hill for.
Ignoring that, the next problem was the service: our waitress seemed easily confused (botching Lawrence's drink order, among other things) and borderline rude at times.
They did do a very good shrimp-stuffed mushroom appetizer: even Lawrence, who isn't as fond of mushrooms as I am, exclaimed delight with this dish. On the other hand, my fried fish (actually, shrimp and oysters) platter seemed kind of skimpy for $10.75.
They offer a Cajun sampler platter, which gets you four decent-sized bowls of your choice of dishes: Lawrence went this route, and I polished off most of one of his bowls of crawfish etouffee. I make no claims to being an etouffee expert, but I don't think the dominant flavor in this dish is supposed to be flour.
Hoody's is new, and the kitchen may need time to shake down: we may have caught them on an off night: I may have been expecting something they don't deliver. But I'm not going to wonder what I'm missing.
Note that Hoody's puts the sub portion of their name first. Maybe I should have taken that to mind and ordered a sub, but instead I ordered a "Cajun Combo" that came with gumbo, jambalaya, and crawfish etouffee (of which I got a double order). I was expecting the gumbo to come on the side in a bowl, but everything came in it's own bowl. The etouffee was good, as was Dwight's stuffed mushroom appatizer, but the gumbo and jambalya were quite bland, and the salad eminently forgettable.
The biggest problem I have with Hoody's is that it doesn't have all the Cajun dishes I really love, like various blackened dishes, and even the dishes it does have (like gumbo) just don't compare to the same dishes at Gumbo's or Pappadeaux's. If I lived in Oak Hill, I might drop in every now and then for the etoufee and a sub, but Hoody's has a long way to go before they can be a real Cajun Contender.
A note on the decor: the walls are decorated with photos and posters for Blues and Zydeco greats, both from Austin and elsewhere. I wonder if there is a store that sells this stuff exclusively for Austin restaurants to decorate with as a competitor to BMTCRSC.
Eh, why bother? Lawrence pretty much nails it.
Food's still okay, but they seem to have slipped a bit. And with the service problems, why not just drive the extra few blocks to the Thai Kitchen on William Cannon?
A real disappointment.
When we tried it last year, Thai Garden seemed poised to become a genuine competitor to Thai Kitchen. This year's visit, however, showed precipitous slippage in the quality of service.
We were seated and our drink and appatizer orders submitted without incident. However, just as we were ready for our entrees, our waitress disappeared for over half an hour. When we were finally able to catch the attention of the waiter filling our water glasses, he mistook our interest and brought us the check. Moreover, despite asking for my chicken larb "very, very, very hot," there was no detectable heat (or the promised peppers) when the dish was brought out, possibly due to his very limited English proficiency.
As for the food itself, it was adequate, but little more. The Tod Mun fish fritters were still good, but the Tom Yum Gai soup was disappointing, and my larb bland. About the only advantage Thai Garden has is being relatively inexpensive, but with service this poor I'm not rushing back.
To me, "interior Mexican" food is associated with "expensive", "not very good", and "strange ingredients" (and by strange, I mean things like an obscure fungus that grows only on corn grown in the southern part of Mexico.) I wasn't looking forward to this, frankly.
And I felt justified early on: a plate of chicken nachos for $8.50? Not a large plate, either.
But credit where credit is due: the chicken fajitas are the best I've had recently: tender, moist, and a generous portion (cooked only with onions, no green pepper, the way God intended). And only $8.95? That's Serrano's pricing: and both the quality and quantity of Serrano's chicken fajitas have gone downhill recently.
I'm still not a believer, but the North Manuel's brings me closer to conversion.
The North Manuel's has potential, but so far it seems largely unfulfilled.
The decor is rather nice and we were seated quickly, but things went downhill after that. I started off asking if you could get the venison chorizo gorditas without the black bean sauce, and found out you couldn't because they were premade (though presumably not by talking chihuahuas imitating Che Guevara). Since this was not an encouraging sign, I opted for some standards: chicken nachos and beef fajitas. Both were competent but uninspired, and I don't think corn tortillas work as well as flour for fajitas.
Service was generally good, but there were occasional waits on drink refills, even though several members of the waitstaff were standing around just outside the kitchen talking. I'm willing to chalk up the latter to the combined effects of Holloween and UT's surprise football win over Nebraska.
I would like to go back and try the crab enchiladas, but I'm not in any rush.
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