Jeff K.'s Profile

This place is great, mainly because you can feed two people pretty good food for the same price as a single order of Pad Thai at the Indian place next door.  The menu has flat bread pizzas, sandwiches, paninis, wraps, and salads.  They have wireless, free refills on the sodas and the place is clean.  There's also a Taco Maker location here, if that's your thing.  There's a lot of over-priced food on the strip in Condado.  Before we ate at Camille's we got two orders of gelato at a place around the corner for $13.  Ow.

This is our favorite grocery store.  In fact, sometimes we go to this Target just to hang out.  My wife can get a Pumpkin Spice Cream thing at Starbucks, they have reasonably priced pizza and breadsticks deals at the mini Pizza Hut, they stock a great variety of nice groceries including boutique spices and sauces like Moles and Kormas that make meal prep a breeze.  Their meat department isn't as good as say, HEB, but it's certainly serviceable, and their vacuum packed ground beef lasts forever.  They have good deals, especially on the clearance endcaps.  (50% off some soda from Mexico I've never heard of?  Why not!)  On top of that it's a Target, so it's perfect for picking up some lightbulbs or a throw blanket or a toy for a kid's birthday party.

For Halloween Target put up huge inflatable Domokuns, which makes it even cooler.  Style for not that much more than Wal-Mart?  And I can sleep at night knowing they treat their employees better and care about design?  Hallelujah!

This is a nice place, the kind of place you'd stop on a road trip down Route 66 if instead of a $5 sandwich you wanted say, a $9 sandwich or a $14 chicken fried steak.  I guess you pay for nostalgia.  They play good jazzy music, the service is prompt and friendly, though splitting the tab for our party of 15 was a comedy of errors.  I can't really blame them, public schooling doesn't result in great math minds, but we split the bill 5 ways and everybody's bill was wrong.

The food is good, I got the combo with a turkey, bacon and avocado sandwich with a cup of their 2 alarm chili and half-and-half fries and onion rings.  Everything was good, though the chili's more on the ground-beefy side than the chunks of meat side.  People seemed really happy with the deserts, but I didn't try them.  Dinner for 5 was $75, so if you're cool with spending that much at a diner, it's a winner.  If it were closer to us, we'd probably go regularly.

Good but pricey Cajun food.  A bowl of gumbo and a soft drink is going to be around $12.  That's too rich for my blood on a regular basis, but the Cajun Gumbo I had was good.  The etouffee one of my dining companions had looked really good, too.  Our waiters were very prompt with the drink refills, almost shockingly so.  Some of the most prompt service I've had as far as that goes.  If it was a couple of bucks cheaper I'd be more inclined to be a regular.

I'll say it now, my wife would give this place a 4 or 5.  She comes in and gets her honeydew pearl drink and her B2 (grilled pork on vermicelli with an egg roll) and is happy as can be.  I've had a bit more trouble.

This is the newest Pho Thaison (or Thai Son if you prefer) in Austin, and the interiors are definitely spruced up compared to the location on Guadalupe or Wm. Cannon.  Flat panel tvs, nice tables, etc.

The service is good and attentive.  You'll see the same folks every time, and if you've been going to the Wm. Cannon location for a while they might recognize you.  They're always friendly.

The menus been spruced up a bit, they've added california rolls (don't bother) and pad thai (eh) .  If you're coming here, though, you're coming for pho or one of the old standbys.  The old standbys like the grilled pork over vermicelli are as good as you remember.  I usually get #54, which has a mix of imitation crab, squid, grilled pork, grilled chicken and shrimp in a broth with egg noodles.  It's good and very filling.  Not particularly flavorful, but I may not be applying the sauces right.

This is a fun place to eat and the food is good.  If you like Italian, you'll probably like it, though more authentic Italian than American Italian.  The main dining area shares a space with some market isles, deli and dessert counters, and the actual restaurant counter.  If you got a table in the corner or outside it might be more intimate, but it's generally just loud and fun.

As far as the food goes, everything I've had so far has been good.  The downside has been that every time I've gone we end up ordering the same thing, since it's good.  It always seems to be the place to go with friends, and then we end up getting the antipasto platter and a sausage and mushroom pizza.  Yea, it's good, but I'd like to explore the menu a bit more.

The antipasto platter is excellent, though pricey.  What's on it varies with who's making it and what's in the deli.  The meats are generally consistent but whether you get those onions or artichokes is luck of the draw.  If you really want something from the deli case, you're probably better of just buying some before hand.

Their desserts are good, their tirimisu is... exciting.

The only problem with Mandola's is that it's too far away from my house.  If this place were in South Austin we'd probably be there every week or two.

Update:

We went for happy hour the other day, and had some of their happy hour $1.50 sushi and $2.99 rolls.  It definitely helped on the price total, even though every coke refill adds more than a buck.  Ugh.  The sushi was ok, but I'm still not really excited about it.  They don't put wasabi in their sushi, which makes it taste a little bland to me.  I realize I can wipe it over the top, which I did, but I'd rather not have to fool with it.  The eel roll we got tasted vinegar-y.  The service was attentive and friendly and the decor looked better in daylight, but it's still a bit weird.

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Haiku's a nice little place that fits well with the rest of the restaurants at the grove in Southpark Meadows.  If anything the interior is... tall.  The dining area isn't terribly large, but it's interestingly laid out and the ceilings are tall, which gives a strange feeling.  Also, there's a lot of, if I remember correctly, green light.  The result is that it feels more modern that some may like, and not exactly intimate.  If you had a booth by the windows it might be better, but it was hard to avoid looking at the other people eating.

The sushi is fresh and pretty good.  It's not mindblowing enough to knock off my favorite sushi spot, but the prices are good and the food is enjoyable.  The service is friendly and attentive.

Monday thru Friday from 4 till 6 or 6:30 they have Happy Hour in the bar with some really good deals like buy one drink get one free, $2.99 california rolls and other goodies.  We haven't been yet, but that's probably what we'll hit next.

This seems like a nice enough restaurant, it's not as intimate as Texican Cafe.  Definitely not the place for a quiet dinner with conversation, but the service is friendly and the place seems really lively.  The food was ok, I got the appetizer platter that had a little bit of everything.  My wife got tacos, and in retrospect I probably would have gone that route as well.  They have a fair number of fish dishes if that's your thing, and a lot of different kinds of tacos.  No mole, though, so if that's your thing, this isn't the place for you.  The night we went was buy one get one free enchilada plate night, which could be a really cheap way to feed a few folks.  It wouldn't be my first choice for tex-mex, Chuy's and Trudy's trump it handily, but if you're already at Southpark Meadows and have a hankering for it, it's perfectly acceptable.

Lookie here, a new Waterloo Ice House for all us schmucks who live in South Austin.  Thank god for Southpark Meadows.  I'm sure everybody wishes that the stones were still playing here and it was all fields of green, but from a dining and shopping standpoint I'm glad I don't have to drive all the way across town anymore.  Anyway, that's really beside the point.

This Waterloo just opened last weekend (Dec 1st, 07) and we happened to be there for lunch.  They had an austin-y band (Wild Thing, Christmas songs, stuff they made up on the spot), a guy making balloon hats and animals, a guy dressed as a cow, etc.  It was all very exciting.  The food took a little longer than I expected, but you know, first meal on opening day.  I'll cut them some slack for that.  Our waiter gave us the wrong check, but that was quickly taken care of by a manager who was checking on people.

The food, however, was pretty good.  The burger I had (quacamole, bacon and something else) was just the right size.  Enough meat that you feel like you ate a burger but not too much meat that you're hurting the next day.  Good, well seasoned fries (hand cut so you get the fun, weird little end pieces sometimes), and the mix on the diet cokes was excellent.  I'm a bit of a Diet Coke snob, having had so much of it in the last few years, and maybe it was just because it was all fresh, but it was one of the best fountain Diet Cokes I've ever had.

They have HDTVs around, seating outside next to the playscape, and it's all around a nice little place to have a burger.  It's not romantic, it's not quiet, but people were having a good time and the food was good.  I'll definitely be back.

Valentinos does some excellent pizza.  I'm not just saying that because one of my friends used to work there, though when she hooked me up with a heart shaped pizza for valentines day that was pretty awesome.  Valentinos pizza isn't a new york style chewy foldable crust affair, or a chicago style deep dish affair, it's something different.  The crust (white or wheat, your choice) is relatively thin, but more dense and less chewy than new york style hand thrown pizza.  The sauce is more sweet and the focus is on the toppings.  The crusts on the pizza are small, so if you don't like crusts you won't feel ripped off.

I've heard that their salads and pasta dishes are good, for for my money it's pizza or nothing.  The decor of this place is college dive-ish.  Half of the folks in the joint at any given time are regulars.  It's been open for as long as I've been around San Marcos, so at least a decade or two, probably more.

It's a pepsi joint, so take that into account.  I'd usually take off for that but the pizza's good enough to justify drinking lemonade or sierra mist.  They have a salad bar, but I've never been one for those.