Austin Grill, Washington, D.C.

Brunch today was downtown in the Gallery Place neighborhood with Robert, who appeared to have only a very slight touch of hangover after his natal anniversary festivities last night. He'd picked out this place and had been wanting to come for brunch for some time, so that's how we ended up at Austin Grill.

Austin Grill is a Tex-Mex kind of place. There are about a half dozen other Austin Grills in the metropolitan area; the owners, however, originated in Austin, Tex. It's a fairly standard Tex-Mex place with the usual suspects on the menus and the expected ecclectic decor. In addition to the regular menu, they also have a special brunch menu. While we looked at our menus, we got chips and salsa.

Robert started off with some dog's hair...uh, er, hair of the dog....and ordered a bloody Mary. He ordered a steak and eggs platter from the brunch menu. There were several strips of fajita beef, a couple of over-easy eggs, and a bunch of fried potatoes. For dessert, he had a vanilla flan.





I had the Bevo salad. Now, those of you not familiar with Texas may not realize that Bevo is the name of that great big longhorn steer the University of Texas uses as a mascot. I expected the salad to be huge and topped with beef. The salad was only average sized, though, and topped with chicken (as well as guacamole, feta cheese, black beans, corn relish, and pico de gallo). A cilantro-lime dressing flavored the greens. It was a filling salad, and packed quite a bit of spice heat. For dessert, I had the orange flan. Then flan itself was intensely orange flavored and I noted an orange taste even in the caramel sauce on top of the flan.





I was an interesting place. I'll have to go back again sometime and try the various Tex-Mex entrees.