Texas

Austin has a lot going on. Besides being the state capital, the city has amazing music venues with a great collection of bars and a dynamic food scene. Austin has it all. Upscale, fine dining restaurants as well as affordable neighborhood hangouts specializing in Mexican, Asian, Indian, French, American cuisine and more barbecue and burger joints than you can shake a stick at.

One way to navigate the diverse food scene is to check out the food trucks. Encounter a food truck in most cities and they’re pretty utilitarian. Usually the truck is a step van with a window cut along one side where customers order and pick up their food. To eat your meal, you stand on the sidewalk trying not to get food on your clothes. A web site, Austin Food Carts, keeps track of the comings and goings of trucks, with daily updates.

But the majority of food trucks in Austin aren’t trucks at all.  With tires mere props, these trucks are trailers. Since they never move, trailers can offer customers creature comforts like picnic benches and umbrellas. There’s even an ATM machine and a patch of Astro Turf at a trailer called Bar-B-Que-T on South Congress at East Monroe. Some have all but lost their “trailer-ness.”

Houston, it seems, has as many nicknames as it does oil wells, but the one that touches my Texas DNA is THE BIG HEART!   Not a bad welcoming moniker for visitors invading the town for Super Bowl  Weekend.  Houston - The Biggest Heart, Deep in the Heart of Texas - got this particular name from storm victims fleeing the ravages of Hurricane Katrina.  No other city opened its doors as Houston did.  Houston housed, fed and attended to more than 150,000 survivors, many of whom have chosen to now call Houston their home.

Big Heart -  Big Eaters!  … and great restaurants!  For Mexican and Tex/Mex:  Caracol, Hugo’s, Molina’s, Molina’s Cantina. For Texas BBQ:  Goode Company BBQ, Luling City Real Texas Bar-B-Que.  Fried Chicken: Barbecue Inn, Frenchy’s.  Seafood: Caracol, Zydeco Louisiana Diner, Japanese:  Uchi, Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ,  Uptown Sushi.  Indian:  Maharaja Bhog and the Bombay Pizza Company.

Caracol is not my idea of a Mexican Restaurant. My idea of a Mexican restaurant is that small family owned local café in Toluca Lake or Carmen’s on 3rd St. that we would go to on Thursday night, and I would chow down on buttered tortillas with beans and rice while the rest of the family ordered the ”regular.”

In Houston where my grandmother lived, we would go to Felix’s, but by then I was eating everything on the menu. Their décor was tipico (and we all know the painted plates and over sized sombreros that hung on the walls). Cozy and dark, familiarity bred joy and a deep sense of comfort – not contempt. (Let’s not discuss the ubiquitous swinging singles Mexican bars with their multi-colored chips that proliferate the landscape.)

No, Caracol is definitely not tipico! The painted plates have been replaced by a 16 foot contemporary painting of a giant red squid – the main focal point in a bright, relaxed but sophisticated white and black interior, and while you can get beans and rice, don’t expect a “regular” anywhere on the menu.

The Charcoaler in El Paso, Texas, looks like it fell out of time capsule from the 1950s. That is a good thing. A beautiful glass fronted open building sits back from busy Mesa Drive with an expansive lawn stretching to the seriously retro sign out front. This is truly a classic drive through restaurant.

You pull your 1955 Chevy up to one of four speaker signs depicting a chef holding a big sign with the menu on it. A helpful voice crackles on the speaker asking you for your order. You reply Cheeseburger ($1.95), French fries ($1.00), Onion Rings ($1.55) and a chocolate shake ($1.20). “Sorry, we only have vanilla shakes today.” The voice crackles back. You answer that is fine. “That will be $6.19. Please pull around to the window.”

You oblige and pull up behind three other hamburger hopefuls in the queue. When you get to the window, a neatly dressed young man takes your money and hands you three identical white paper sacks, with the Charcoaler logo on them and a small red cup with your vanilla shake. You thank the man and pull the car under one of two 100-foot long awnings, that will shield you form the Texas sun while you feast.