Thursday, April 24th
Began the morning with a lesiurely drive around the west side of Austin, gradually working my way towards Cafe Pacha. With mixed reviews, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I started by ordering a large black coffee – $2.08 and a fried egg, cheese, spinach and Canadian Bacon taco on a flour tortilla. It came with a small side of salsa and was quite good. The egg and cheese part was $3.50 plus $0.75 for each of the 2 add-ons. The egg was fried past medium to prevent dripping out of the tortilla. A flavorful combination that I would order again.
The place was busy at 10:00am on a weekday. My experience with the help was great…but it was a one-time visit. They explained the various options as signage is scattered and small (in the case of hot breakfast items.) My food arrived quickly and was hot. I sat near the counter and all the interactions seemed pleasant.
Enroute to Cafe Pacha, I drove by the Kolache Factory at 3706 North Lamar. If you read my post from yesterday, you’ll know there was no force on Earth keeping from this stop.
Located in the medical sector, the Kolache Factory did a brisk business during my entire visit. Once again, sweet and savory…and savory won out again.
I started with a Sausage, Egg and Cheese – sorta of an enclosed egg sandwich. The sausage was a crumbled breakfast style sausage. Bacon and potato were other options and avaiable in different combinations.
Next up – Sausage & Cheese, mainly to compare to yesterday’s stop at the The Big Kolache. Thet were amazingly similar.
I finished the savory cycle with a Philly Cheese Steak – which became my favorite. The onions were a great contrasting flavor to the sweet Kolache dough. Great!
Poppyseed was my sweet choice as I have been a poppyseed guy growing up. This Kolache had a dry dough, porbably from over baking. The filling was okay, although I prefer raisins and a more moist poppyseed mixture. Having grown up on poppyseed kolache, this was only fair.
Lunch brought me to Hut’s Hamburgers. A great burger joint…but at big city prices. I tried the #7 – Hut’s Favorite. The burger was on a standard issue bun and after inquiring, came in at 6 ozs. The #7 includes bacon, American cheese & LTM. I loved it! Cooked precisely medium, juicy and hot…it ranks up with the best of them.
Burger options besides the 19 varieties of toppings allow for substituting buffalo for $1.25, chicken for $1.25, veggie for free, a second patty for $2.25 or Texas Grassfed Natural Beef for $1.25. Selecting the Texas Grassfed creates a leaner and potentially drier burger and cooking times are recommended to be shorter…med-well goes to med., etc.
The Half Fries & Half Rings at $3.50 are an enormous basket. Mine had 4 rings, two of which were the size of softballs. The two small ones were bigger than baseballs!
The fries were GREAT! Skin on, hand done type, brown and crispy. I ordered Chipolte Mayo for $0.50 and tried it on the burger and fries. The rings contained course ground pepper in the batter giving it a spicey pop, but at least today, the onions were bitter. A sweet onion with the pepper bits and Chipolte mayo could have been heaven.
from my cellphone…
Hut’s has real fountain syrups to add to any soft drink choice – cherry, vanilla or chocolate.
My afternoon snack stop was a surprise. While driving in South Austin on South Congress – SOCO, for short, I spied a 4 foot cupcake on top of a trailer. Tow blocks later, i pulled the U-turn and parked at Congress and Milton. Sitting on the NE corner is an Airstream Trailor with an EZUP tent.
The Hey Cupcake (forever known to me as the Austin Cupcake Trailor) has seven standard cupcakes ,29,396548.004,1,37546,63.97.158.3
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