Over the past several years, I have heard from several friends and from countless articles that “Austin is a food town.” I didn’t pay much attention to that statement, since I lived in DC and DC is a really good town for food. With it’s huge metropolitan footprint and international population, you can find whatever cuisine you’re looking for with ease, and new fusion restaurants are popping up constantly to add new variety to the mix. But Austin takes food to a whole different level.
One of the fastest growing cities in the US, Austin reportedly has an average of 125 people move to the city each day for the past few years, and they are on track to have over a million residents in the city by the end of 2018. Many of the newcomers are young urbanites working for the rapidly growing tech sector in the city, and with them comes an appreciation for quality food. As the city’s population has grown, so have the food offerings around town, ranging from food trucks to social-seating BBQ and from upscale steakhouses to beer gardens. One thing that Austin has managed to do extremely well is to keep a firm hold on its small city feel when it comes to most of the restaurants. You’ll certainly find places that have a generic or corporate look to them, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
Of course, here in the heart of Texas, BBQ is king. There are plenty of good BBQ joints around Austin, and locals will swear by their favorite joint, sometimes driving well out of their way or sitting in line for hours* to eat there. But with the influx of young people from all over the country, including plenty of refugees from the SF Bay area and from the Pacific northwest, the number of residents who adhere to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle has also grown. It is quite common to see those options on menus, and some restaurants even have an entirely separate menu made up for people who prefer to avoid meat or animal products. Many restaurants have statements on their websites, front doors, or menus touting their adherence to sustainable sourcing or their efforts to go as green as possible while still providing great food to their customers. My palate isn’t refined enough to be able to tell the difference between a chicken that was raised in a co-op down the street from a factory farmed bird from across the country, but if it costs an extra dollar and I have some assurance that the bird was treated humanely and lived well before it was slaughtered and turned into nuggets, then I consider that a dollar well spent.
Austin is also a big town for food trucks. In most cities, the food trucks come out in the morning to provide midday meals for people working in the city. Sometimes you’ll see some of them in the evening or at special events, but other than that, the food trucks disappear in the afternoon to return to whatever hideout they call home. In Austin, however, the food trucks find a spot that they like and they stay there. Rarely are they parked in a parking spot on the side of the street, but rather several of them will gather in an unused lot in the city and that’s where they can be found 24/7. They may only be open for the regular lunch rush, but at least you know where to find them. As Karen and I wandered through the city and kept finding these little enclaves of food trucks everywhere, it occurred to me that you could potentially spend two months eating 3 meals a day at food trucks in Austin and never have to hit the same one twice.
Unlike many other cities, using Yelp or Google to find restaurants ideas will not help narrow down your list as much as it may add more options to your list. Before we went to Austin, we had a list of restaurants that we wanted to check out, some based on reviews or magazine articles, others based on recommendations from friends. Once we got to Austin, we looked for other options to fill in the missing meals, and our list of choices quickly grew past the number of meals our stomachs could reasonably hold. As we headed to the airport to leave Austin, I realized that our list of restaurants to check out was longer on the way out than it was on the way in. Even though we had some very tasty meals, I can’t help but wonder about all of the great restaurants and food trucks that were left untried. I guess I’ll have to go back again with to keep working through my restaurant list. And next time, I’m packing my pants with the stretchable waistband.
* Franlkin BBQ is often considered to be the best BBQ in the country, and, given their “no reservations” policy, people have been known to stand in line for up to 4 hours to get a seat.
