The Great Austin Burger Hunt - Mighty Fine Burgers

Mighty Fine Burgers

10515 N. Mo Pac Expy Ste. 205

Austin, TX 78759

512-524-2400

I went to Mighty Fine Burgers a few years ago, before I started looking for Austin’s best burger. I remember it as a good burger, but I never got around to coming back so that I could review it…until now. 

I ordered the half pound regular burger, with bacon and cheese along with fries and a Diet IBC Root Beer. Mighty Fine actually serves Beer, which is an advantage for those who like beer with their burgers. I don’t really care, but it is something to remember.

The burger was good, but not spectacular. The bun was well toasted, but it was just a bun, not really much better than anyone else’s. The cheese was plentiful and well melted, but again, nothing special, just plain old American Cheese. It is a little disappointing considering the build up of this premium burger.

Just a quick word about the fries. They are over cooked, but still tasty. They are a bit greasy as well and they are plentiful enough that two people can easily share one order.

Well, it doesn’t seem like I have a lot good to say about Mighty Fine Burgers. It was a good burger, but after eating at Hat Creek Burger Company, I expect more, and I just didn’t get it from Mighty Fine.

China Palace

6605 Airport Blvd.

Austin, TX 78752

(512) 451-0918

I went out for lunch on a Monday and found one chinese restaurant either closed forever, or just for the day.  Fortunately, China Palace was only about two miles away.  China Palace is a small place, and it certainly isn't fancy, but that isn't always needed.  Look at BBQ places, generally, the shabbier they look, the better the BBQ.

I ordered my usual, Sesame Chicken, and it wasn't long in coming.  As I always do, I got it to go, but I sampled everything while it was still hot.  Eating Sesame Chicken while driving is a bit difficult, but I didn't want to be late getting back, and I wanted to taste everything while hot.

First, the serving was very large.  Lots of big pieces of chicken, and lots of sauce.  A large amount of sauce can make eating in a moving car and adventure while you move the tray around trying to keep the sauce off the seats.  My wife won't be happy when she reads this.  I like the extra sauce though because then I can mix it with the rice.

A point to China Palace for not putting the egg roll in with the hot steamy food.  Nothing worse than opening up your to go meal and finding that the lovely crispy fried egg roll has been steamed into a soggy mess.  A point against China Palace for putting broccoli in with the Sesame Chicken.  It's not Sesame Chicken with Broccoli, and I have only once been served Sesame Chicken with Broccoli when sitting down in a Chinese Restaurant and yet they feel obliged to add it to the take out lunch.

But, back to the Egg Roll, which was quite good.  It was done with the light crispy wrapper, rather than the heavier crispy wrapper and the vegetables were still crisp.  I can recommend them.  The fried rice had virtually no vegetables, but it was tasty.  The Sesame Chicken was sweet and not very spicy.  I only mention this because I have had Sesame Chicken that is quite spicy, so I feel the need to mention it.

One bite of Hot and Sour soup and I said not hot enough, and it isn't hot, but it started to come on after several bites.  The soup was very thick, with that sheen that speaks of a little too much cornstarch to thicken it.  I make my own Sesame Chicken, and it is easy to do.  It did not really hurt the soup, which was tasty and turned out at the end to be just about hot enough for my taste.

The last bit of my meal was mixing the left over sauce with the rice, which was delicious.  It wasn't fancy, and it wasn't perfect, but it was definitely good enough to give it a second try.

Alton Brown's Cheese Soup

Alton Brown's Cheese Soup

 

I watch Alton Brown's show, Good Eats, on Hulu, and not long ago, they showed his second show on Cheese.  After spending two years in France as a young man, I have a great love of all things cheese, so I was particularly interested to see what Alton would do with the subject.

I came away from the show with two recipes, one for a cheese spread made from leftover bits of cheese, which is a funny idea in my house, where cheese disappears at light speed, and the cheese soup that I have linked to above.  I was at the grocery store thinking about dinner when I decided that I would try Alton's Cheese Soup.

I keep recipes in OneNote on SkyDrive.  I can highly recommend this to anyone.  It allows me to call up a recipe on my phone.  Of course, it helps that I have Windows Phone 7, and Windows Live is integrated into the OS.  I can input recipes on any computer with an internet connection, and then call it up on my phone.  Evernote would probably do the same thing.

Now, if you will take a moment to look at the recipe, you will see that it starts with a pretty standard mirepoix (celery, carrots, onions).  Normally I am not a fan of mirepoix.  I am not a big fan of onions (hence the title of this blog) and I really hate cooked celery.  This recipe caught my eye because you puree the vegetables after cooking.  I figured I might be able to handle the mirepoix if they were reduced to an almost unrecognizable mash before I ate it.  That "almost" will turn out to be quite important.

The recipe is pretty simple.  Sweat the vegetables, toss in a little flour, add chicken broth and simmer for half an hour.  One suggestion is to do your mise en place, at least for everything used in this first stage of the recipe.  After starting the simmer, you have 30 minutes to grate your cheese, and get your cream and finishing elements ready, but you need everything else ready when you start, so that you can watch your vegetables sweat.

I made only one major change to the recipe.  I used 8 oz. of Tillamook Smoked Cheddar, and a bit extra of HEB Artisan Cheddar.  One other thing of note.  I used HEB Garlic Chicken Broth, in a carton.  It was 32 oz. by weight, which turned out to be just a little short of the quart mentioned in the recipe.  My soup didn't notice the difference.

Everything worked out just the way Alton said it would.  I took it off the heat, removed the bay leaf, added the cream and blitzed it with my stick blender.  I wasn't sure that I got it as blitzed as I wanted, and to be honest, I didn't.  I am not sure that I could have any better with any other sort of blender, but what I do know, is that the vegetables ended up in very small bits, too small to need chewing.  Unfortunately, the fibrous celery left behind a few long strands which were less than ideal.

But, the cheese melted easily, just from the residual heat from the simmering, and I ended up with a tasty cheese soup.  After tasting, I added a little more salt, and a little more Worcestershire Sauce.  As mentioned in the recipe, I did need to reheat it a little after that to bring it back to hot.

I liked it, but I ladled myself up a rather large bowl, and didn't completely finish it.  By the end I found the onion to be a little overpowering.  Onions do that to me.  They seem to build up as I eat something with a lot of onion flavor in it.

This recipe makes a lot of soup, and being a cream soup, you shouldn't leave it out too long.  Get it into the refrigerator as soon as it cools.

Update:  Night One, I did not finish the bowl of soup that I started.  It was good, but my opinion didn't last until the end of the bowl.  I tried more the next day, reheated in a microwave, and didn't really care for it.  When I got home, I tried reheating it in a pan.  I find this hard to say, but I couldn't take more than a bite or two.

By the second night, it tasted more like a vegetable soup with some cheese in it, and I ended up throwing out about a third of it, because no one in the house wanted to eat it.  Maybe the type of cheese made the difference, but as a recipe for a cheddar cheese soup, I have to mark this one as a failure.

Panda Express

2501 W Parmer Ln
Austin, TX
(512) 821-2307

My wife and I were on our way to a meeting and needed something quick for dinner and I let her talk me into Panda Express.  It was against my better judgment.  I'd been there once before and hadn't liked it.  

First, I don't really like the way they do things.  You end up having to order two entrees, along with rice and soup and an egg roll cost extra.  By the time you get what would be considered a whole meal in a true Chinese Restaurant, it costs you as much or more as that Chinese Restaurant, and it isn't nearly as good.

I got Orange Chicken, as the closest thing to the Sesame Chicken that I love, and something with Beef and broccoli.  The chicken was chewy, the beef was tasteless, and they need to change the name of that entrée to Broccoli with a hint of Beef.  There was very little beef, which as I said was tasteless, and it was hidden in masses of overcooked broccoli.

Of course, things can't help but be overcooked, because they come out and sit under heat lamps for hours on end.  But, I didn't think that chinese cooking could manage to cook all the flavor out of food this way.  Of course, Panda Express bears as much resemblance to chinese cooking as Taco Bell does to mexican cooking (and I like Taco Bell).  And, to accentuate the tastelessness of the fried rice, they didn't give enough sauce with either the chicken or the beef to add much flavor to the rice.

The fried rice was as tasteless as the beef.  I got an egg roll and it was actually crispy on the outside, which was a bit of a surprise, but it was mushy inside, and it tasted a bit odd.  I have eaten a lot of egg rolls and none of them ever tasted like this.

Now, it wasn't a complete loss and I might go back to Panda Express, but it won't be for the Orange Chicken, the Broccoli Beef, the Fried Rice or the Egg Roll.

The Hot and Sour Soup was excellent.  I am a big fan of Hot and Sour Soup, even if all I really want is the broth, and theirs was really good, probably the third best I have ever had and certainly worth a return trip, but I think I will just get the Hot and Sour Soup to go, and then slip across the street to Taco Cabana for Mexican food a step above Taco Bell.

The Great Austin Burger Hunt - Burger King

Burger King

2700 Guadalupe

(512)477-5672

Well, the advertising worked on me...once.  Over the weekend, I saw several commercials for the Burger King Chef's Choice Burger, and that is what I decided to try.  Now, it is not too unusual considering that I write the Great Austin Burger Hunt.  Now, I often end up buying burgers while out doing something else for lunch, and that was again the case today.

I was intrigued by the description of the burger, a special blend of beef, bacon, a thick slice of American Cheese (meh) and an artisan roll.

The first problem was the lettuce.  It was leaf lettuce, but they used the base of the leaf, so that I ended up with a thick stalk, almost like having a celery stalk on the burger.  It was not appetizing, and I ended up pulling it off the burger and throwing it away.

The meat was tasty-ish.  There was nothing wrong with it, but there wasn't really anything special about it either.  It was beef, and surprisingly, the signature Burger King char-broil taste was missing.

The cheese was there, but American cheese is never much to write home about, and putting on a thicker slice, means a thicker slice of nothing much to write home about.

The bacon was limp.  By my way of thinking that makes it undercooked.  Mostly, that makes it a big non-factor in the burger.

An Artisan Roll?  Well, they may want to claim that it is an artisan roll, but I doubt an artisan would be willing to claim it.

The fries were good, better than I remember for Burger King.  They were fairly large cut and well cooked.  I also found that they had reasonable legs, so one point for the BK boys.

Having nothing to do with the burger, except that it could affect any future decision to try Burger King again, the only diet drink they had was Diet Coke.  I prefer Coke Zero or Diet Dr. Pepper.  I have been known to make restaurant choices based on beverage selection.

Conclusion?  I cannot recommend the Burger King Chef's Choice Burger.  It was a very average burger at a premium price...not a good combination.

The Great Austin Burger Hunt - Stallion Grill

Stallion Grill
5201 Aiport Blvd

512-380-9433

I have to admit that I ate my burger from Stallion Grill on the run. I'd been out doing errands on my lunch hour and saw the Stallion Grill and decided to give it a chance. I intend to go back some time and sit down for a burger at my leisure.

The combo that I got was a little odd. It isn't a big chain, so no one asked me if I wanted to upsize, and I ended up with a very small drink. Of course, that isn't the biggest problem in the world, since I didn't actually come for a soda, that is just to wash down the burger and fries.

The burger was enormous, 1/3 lb. and you get a selection of cheeses. I chose Swiss. The burger was excellent, one of the best I have had during my search and easily in the top five, possibly as high as second. The meat was well cooked, not too done, and the cheese was actually there...as a taste, and not just a gooey mass. The only bad thing I have to say about the burger is that the bun did not impress, and yet it was still better than most fast food buns.

The fries were seasoned. They were a bit on the greasy side, but they had good legs as I drove back to work, and they provided catsup in a cup, which is a big boon for the driving diner. When are fast food restaurants going to understand that a catsup packet is worthless to someone in a car?

I was very impressed and the Stallion Grill will be getting more of my business.

Fast Breakfast Tacos Done Right

Taco Cabana

517 MLK Blvd

Austin, TX 78701

(512) 478-0875

So, in a recent review I mentioned Taco Cabana in passing, and I thought I would give them a full review for their breakfast tacos. Taco Cabana's standard breakfast taco combo is $3.29 for two tacos and a drink. If you look back at my previous breakfast taco review, you might see that I paid $3.25 for those two tacos, with no drink.

The real beauty of the Taco Cabana taco is that it is constructed after you order it. Fresh tortilla (they make their own) loaded with eggs and bacon and then wrapped up just for you. Of course, the eggs and bacon are cooked before you ordered it, but the whole thing isn't assembled ahead of time, and then stuck in a warmer.

Fresh food is always better, and so the mass produced tacos of the taco truck just are not going to fair well in comparison...and they don't.

I like the Taco Cabana salsa and I like to order cheese on the side. You can order the cheese on the taco, but I found that the amount of cheese they add to the taco is very small, but if you order it on the side they give you a little tub of cheese which is plenty for two tacos.

There may be better breakfast tacos in Austin, but they aren't close to my work, and they don't have a drive-thru.