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Round Rock Restaurant Redux

Things I should be doing instead of blogging this morning:

• Writing some software.
• Getting ready for the HMF.
• Reading a book.
• Cleaning my office. Elevating my hutch. Finish building those book cases. Installing the kids' shelves. Etc., etc., etcetera. Ugh.

But, the thing is, I haven't blogged in, like, forever. And yesterday I got an e-mail from a friend about some good places to eat. Well, I love a) finding good places to eat and b) eating. So, here's a recap of my reply to her. With some embellishment and maybe a few modifications. Although the title has "Round Rock", it's probably more apt to be "far-north Austin and beyond" so without further ado…

Pizza: Saccone's Jersey Style on RR ave (620) next to the high school.

Burgers: We ate at The Railyard Bar & Grill a few weeks ago and I had a "Red Caboose" burger or something like that. It was basically a blackened (spices) burger. Yummy cajun seasonings! It's up at, um, The Railyard, which is 1431 east of Hwy 183 (okay, yes, technically, that's Cedar Park). A buddy has also told me that Riata Bar and Grill has excellent burgers as well -- almost as good as his personal favorite, Casino's, which is in downtown Austin.

Speaking of cajun, Louisiana Longhorn Cafe in downtown Round Rock was fabulous. I got a real oyster poboy on real french bread and it was dressed and I got some yellow cheese on it and everything. Totally fabulous. Takes me back to New Orleans (to steal a line from a Fred LeBlanc song). The kids had the shrimp poboy and Mer had catfish that was damn good. And the owner was fabulous and even custom-made some bell-peppers, onion-ring-style for us (just like Frankie and Johnnie's down by Tulane where we had our rehearsal dinner!).

For ubiquitous tex-mex, Jardin Corona's is on Pond Springs just off 183, and it's as good as it comes. There used to be this place in downtown RR, but they've changed hands a few times and the last time I was in there, the servers were not 60-year-old hispanic grandmothers (the true sign of a good joint), but underpaid high-school teenie-boppers. Ick. Not going back.

Vietnamese Vermicelli: Kim Phung opened up another shop on Lakeline Mall Blvd, in the same center as the new SupermegaTarget. Their chicken with spicy lemongrass noodle bowl is absolutely awesome. And it's quite a bit closer than the original down on Lamar near 183.

There is apparently an underground food revolution going on in Pflugerville, because we've had great luck there in the past few months. First we found European Bistro, down off Pecan St, which is just awesome. It serves all kinds of Eastern Euro dishes (Hungarian, Bavarian, Czech, etc). Including Pilsner Urckel.

Secondly, there's a wonderful and spirited carribbean place on 1825 roughly opposite the gigantotheater on I-35 called Cafe Mangu. They do fried plantain chips and ropa vieja and jerked just-about-anything.

And for mediterranean fare, Tino's is great. It's at 183 and Anderson Mill. They serve cafeteria style, and standing there in front of their spit roasters (do those things have a name?) is daunting, but once you've got your order placed (entree, salad-or-soup, three sides / gyro) it's good stuff. And you know, you really can't go wrong with spiced, ground lamb.

Now, if I could only find a place like Veggie Heaven (down by t.u. on the drag) up here. I'm also on the lookout for a good Central/South American dive. And a good Chinese-American place that isn't into the whole "nouveau-fusion-stirfrybowl" thing. Suggestions?

Idiocracy

Well...

Meredith and I went to see Idiocracy last night. I was really looking forward to it, mainly because of two reasons 1) Mike Judge, 2) Fox's shunning. According to every piece of information I've read the movie was completely shut down by fox. No marketing, no promos, no t-shirts -- NOTHING. But I've read lots of reviews on the Intarweb that were very positive and the IMDB database and rotten tomatoes both have lots of reviews and a mostly positive (70%+) rating.

Ugh.

It was funny and the writing was mostly well done but there were really two fundamental flaws. Firstly, the humor and the jokes were all pretty lowbrow. Think "Beavis and Butthead", not "Office Space". Lots of potty humor and fart jokes. Secondly, the satirical premise was not biting enough. There were a (very few) places where the scope of current idiocy was alluded to (mostly at the very beginning and very end), but overall -- it was still very "even though we're all dumb as a bunch of fucking stumps, we're still cool heroes." I couldn't tell if that was intentional by Judge or possibly some influence by Fox to attempt not to insult its main constituents.

Overall, the movie was entertaining, but not the "$20 at the box office" type of entertaining. More like the watch it on cable, or maybe -- MAYBE -- pay-per-view or net-flix.

The best part of the evening was finding BB Rover's. They're open 'til 1 am and they  serve food until midnight. That's good to know because we discovered last night that North(west) Austin is in dire need of more late-night hang-outs. Kirby Lane is about it and they're always packed solid. BB Rover's was awesome -- some live music outside and plenty of room inside with a good crowd but not packed. It's pretty much everything I like in a pub -- food, free wi-fi, and piles and piles of different beer options (draught and bottle).

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BASICally speaking...

Ugh.

Why Johnny can't code

A friend sent this to me because he and I are both hobby geeks (in addition to being paid geeks) and we've been chatting about programming recently because I'm trying to figure out whether it's actually worthwhile to try and teach Hays python.

When I was in the 6th grade, in one of my weekly classes, we had a TI-99/4A and I learned to program in LOGO on it. Mostly that just meant trying (and mostly failing) at programming the turtle to draw the starship Enterprise. We got pretty good at math, mostly because we had to figure out the angles and everything and make the turtle turn.... But even before that, I remember a two-week summer camp where we worked on Apple ][ programming in BASIC some, but mostly playing games (I think Crystal Castle).

Anyway, what the hell are we going to do!?!

My kids already know the basics of computer usage. They're proficient with Safari and Word and they love playing games and surfing the Lego website.

But what about the good ol' days when you used to get a magazine and the back third of it was dedicated to source code listings (of course, the MacAddict CD does come with tons of cool stuff)? Can we possibly go back there? You know, I just don't think this:

public class Hello {
public static void main(String[] args) {
while ( true ) {
System.out.println("Hello");
}
}
}

Has the same joie de vivre as:

10: print "Hello"
20: goto 10

Ugh!

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