We decided to go find a bit more live music on our last night in Austin, Texas. After having a pretty amazing BBQ lunch that I posted about yesterday, we drove around for a bit before eventually stopping at a souvenir store to pick up some T-Shirts, and one of the local HEB stores which if you haven't been is an experience unto itself. I seriously could have spent the whole day in there. We picked up some of their fresh homemade flour tortillas to snack on, and then we headed back to the house.
While we were having lunch with our relatives, they mentioned that the just down the road from where we were staying there was going to be a festival called the East Side Kings Festival. The main location for the festival was a small bar called the King Bee. We decided to head down there and check it out.
We were there just a few weeks before Halloween, so they had everything decorated for the holiday. I actually don't know how much of it was decoration for Halloween and how much they keep up year round for ambiance. It was interesting though.
There weren't many tables inside the establishment, but the few they did have had a Super Nintendo hooked up so people could play games in if they wanted.
We ordered a few drinks, and then settled in to listen to the Blues/Funk music the band was playing. It was actually quite good. I took a few videos, but they would be kind of hard to share here.
This is the brochure from the festival that they were having. A big shout out to my wife and her sister for thinking to take the photos of the brochure while my brother in law and I were in line waiting for our drinks to be made. It was a dang good old fashioned.
Now, this is where the night got really interesting! You might remember in one of my earlier posts, we had talked to the owner of a store down in Austin and he was telling us about his favorite Tex-Mex places to eat. The two main restaurants he mentioned were Matt's El Rancho, and the Iron Cactus. If you remember, the night before we tried to get a table at Matt's El Rancho and we were over 200 in line. My brother in law mentioned the place must be huge for them to have a wait list that big.
As we were sitting listening to the music and drinking our beverages I asked my brother in law to check the waitlist just for fun to see where we would be. It had been a while since we had lunch, so we were starting to get a bit hungry.
Surprisingly, we were only number 135 in line this night, so we said what the heck and put our name in for a table. The only problem is, once you put your name in, you have to physically check in with them within 45 minutes to hold your spot in line.
We finished our drinks and started the walk back to the Air BnB to get our rental car. As we were walking, I noticed one of the famous Moon Towers in the distance. Our relative had told us about them, but besides the reference to the Moon Tower in Dazed and Confused, I didn't really know what she was talking about. Then suddenly it all made sense. You can read more about the history of the Moon Towers in the link I posted above.
So we got in the car, and started making our way to Matt's El Rancho. Imagine our surprise when we pulled up and the place was absolutely packed. I mean, people were spilling out the doors to the outside. You know when after a wedding they have the receiving line and everyone just kind of mills about in a big mass, it was like that.
I fought my way through the crowd (the photo above is as we were leaving so it had thinned out a bit) and got inside to the host to let them know we were there. You know those movies and TV shows where everyone is fighting for the hosts attention to get on the list or see where they are at on the list or get themselves moved up the list? It was like that. Any open space between tables was filled with people holding a drink waiting for their turn to actually get a table. It was nuts. The host thanked me for checking in and let me know it would be another hour before our table would be ready.
I headed back out to the car where my brother in law had gotten lucky and found a parking spot pretty close.
After only about twenty minutes, we got the text that our table was ready, so we fought our way back through the crowd to get to our table. Once we were seated, things were a lot more calm. There were two large tables next to us, but we made sure to be overly patient and understanding with our waitress. She said we were the easiest table she had serviced all night.
In the end, the food turned out to be pretty good, but honestly not the best Mexican food I have ever had. I think the experience of being someplace that is clearly so popular and trendy was more of the highlight than the food itself. I've never quite been involved in something like that before, except maybe that one time in Vegas when we went to the Club Rehab Pool at the Hard Rock Casino. I do remember now that the guy told us if you go to Matt's you should go at lunch because they won't be as busy.
Good advice!
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