by Laura
This weekend we dashed off to Austin to enjoy a truly lovely wedding, with so many details planned to make out-of-town guests feel welcome – and well-fed. Austin is one of our favorite cities, in no small part due to the loads of delicious eats in a laid-back atmosphere.
If you’re ever in the vicinity, there are a few things you must try – real deal Tex-Mex, breakfast burritos, and BBQ. While North Carolina BBQ is typically pulled pork, the rehearsal dinner in Austin included beef brisket, sausage and ribs. And, while NC-style can be either vinegary or tomatoey (depending on which end of the state you’re chowing down in), here the flavors are less sauce-dependent and more about smokiness.
Pics from www.saltlickbbq.com!
We gorged ourselves at The Salt Lick, probably the best-known local joint, about 30 minutes from downtown out in Hill Country. Let’s just say that while the vegetarians in the group were offered potato salad, beans and slaw, a bacon-focused cocktail hour gave them fair warning that this was meant to be a heart attack fest. If you go, be sure to save room for the outstanding peach cobbler!
Thanks to a suggestion from a former Austin-ite friend, the next night we headed to El Chile, where both the margaritas and the mole were nothing short of fantastic. The realization that nothing even close to this exists in Chapel Hill made it a bittersweet evening (Torero’s just won best Mexican in the Triangle, and if you’ve ever eaten there, you’ll understand how low the bar has been set), but we weren’t complaining – we were too busy snarfing down enchiladas and tacos.
On the menu for this week: grilled chicken salads!
Laura
Harold
