The next few food adventures are going to concentrate on the cell phone pictures I took on my recent work trip to Austin. The food pictures in this post are regrettably pretty terrible. I apologize for that a head of time. On the positive though, the food was delicious!
Since this is a work trip, I won’t go into a breakdown on what was good or bad. I will track how much of my per diem I spent or if I spent more than my per diem. Since this was Day 1, I start with the full per diem amount:
$370.00
My flight from Des Moines left at 8 AM. So I didn’t buy any breakfast before I left. My layover was in Houston. Terminal B. The dumpiest big airport I’ve ever been in and really no decent food options. So I didn’t actually eat any lunch before my flight got into Austin about 1 PM. My only meal was the free snacks United Airlines kindly gave me. And because the flight attendant on the flight from Houston to Austin was a fellow Cyclone grad, she may have given me an extra snack.
Some pictures from Day 1:
Always a little leery when they hand these to you when you get on a plane.
Waiting to take off.
Breakfast.
Not a big fan of airports where you have to go outside to get on the plane. Like a 3rd World Country. Which I guess Texas is in some ways.
Austin airport.
Baggage claim.
View from my hotel room.
After getting in to the hotel I went to the M Club with Kim and Lowell, which is some kind of secret room where only important people get to go and everything in there is free. Most importantly food. How do the rich get rich and stay rich? Well first they buy the most morally corrupt politicians they can find to give them tax breaks and government contracts and cut benefits for the poor, veterans, and disenfranchised to pay for them. Also, they have secret clubs where they don’t have to pay for anything. For this trip, I lived liked a rich prick. At least for breakfast.
After getting a little bit of food in my stomach we tried to head up to the rooftop bar, but it wasn’t actually open. I didn’t really want to stick around and do nothing, so Lowell and I visited the nearby Museum of the Weird.
While photographing this mural, I was approached by a comedian that asked me to take their picture. They were in Austin to become famous and be on some show that I’ve never heard of. Beat Tony or Kill Steve. Maim Fred. I hope they did well.
Presented without commentary
I finally got some real food when Kim, Lowell, and I supped at Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que. Home of the Big Chop. I didn’t get the Big Chop. In fact, I don’t even know what it is.
I got the brisket, sausage, cornbread, and potato salad. The sweet tea to drink. I have a very strict policy of drinking sweet tea when I’m in the South. Now Austin, Texas is probably more southwest than south, but the rule still stands.
The Quick Overview:
- The brisket and sausage was fantastic.
- The sweet tea was solid.
- The cornbread was mid. Probably made with non-Iowa corn though, so what can you expect.
- The potato salad was also mid and a very strange consistency for potato salad. Almost like a potato salad paste.
- They served cafeteria style, so you got a tray and then kind of pointed at what you wanted. Then they charged you at the end and gave you a piece of paper for your plate.
- The seating was open, so you sat on long picnic style tables and probably with strangers. I don’t mind this. Some people might. I go to enough community dinners that it works for me.
- The highlight of the meal, nay the highlight of the trip, was when a houseless person came in and started digging through Lowell’s discarded butcher’s paper. Then stole food off his plate and the plate of the people from Sacramento sitting next to him and ran off with it. I’ve visited several cities where I was told that they had a TON of houseless people. I was not told this about Austin, but I think I saw more houseless people in Austin than any other city I’ve been in. And it probably wasn’t even close. Again, I am not bothered by the presence of houseless people. I’m bothered that we live in a system where our social safety nets and mental health care systems are so broke that there are so many houseless people out there. There is a fair chance that we deserved (meaning Lowell and the Sacramento couple obviously) this theft because a houseless person did ask us as we walked in to bring him a sandwich. We did not do this. The karma wheel spun and this was the result that was spit out. The manager of the restaurant did replace all the “stolen” food. Stolen in quotes, because if you believe in Pe’ah or Leket, well we all know Leviticus 19:9-10, don’t we?
- The damage was $52.10
This was the only meal I paid for all day. Also the only meal I ate all day. So after Day 1 in Austin this is what remained of my per diem:
$317.90
I was hoping not every meal in Austin would be $52.10, but after not really eating all day I was pretty famished and it was $52.10 well spent.
Next Sunday we will continue on my Austin food adventure!