Since I was in the north part of town, I went to the Round Rock locations for each.
The Salt Lick: Pit Barbecue
For many years, if you wanted to eat at the The Salt Lick, you had to be motivated to do it. The original location in Driftwood, TX is in the Texas Hill Country southwest of Austin, about 20 miles outside of Austin in a very rural area.
Family patriarch Thurman Roberts Sr. decided to open a barbecue restaurant in 1969 to bring in income, and dug a barbecue pit on the family farm in Driftwood. His Hawaiian-born wife Hisako helped create a somewhat unique sauce with a hint of Asian influence and The Salt Lick eventually began to attract customers who would drive a good distance to eat there.
In recent years they opened locations in Las Vegas, Austin's Bergstrom Airport (now closed) and, last fall, in Round Rock.
The Round Rock restaurant is in a corner of the parking lot for Dell Diamond, the minor league stadium named for the city's major employer, Dell Computer. The Salt Lick's building has an upscale pseudo-rancher style.
The Barbecue
I got the combination platter in order to sample the ribs, sausage, and beef brisket. The sausage was the best -- tender to the bite and with enough spices to make it worth eating even without the sauce -- while the brisket and ribs were good but not extraordinary. The sauce was unusual, with the original brown sauce tasting a bit like a teriyaki on top of a vinegar base and the spicier yellow sauce having something of a mustard flavor.
Surprisingly, I really liked the bread they served which had a pillowy, slightly sweet, fresh potato roll character, and was glad to accept when they offered me seconds. I also liked the blueberry cobbler a la mode, which was very country in style and was loaded with large plump, juicy blueberries.
The other sides -- barbecue beans, potato salad, and cole slaw -- were just average. They were neither bad, nor good enough to rave about.
Chuy's Tex-Mex
Chuy's is a small chain that started in Austin, and they have a quirky character that extends to their food. Most Mexican restaurant chains are pretty similar, but the food at Chuy's has an unusual bias toward very strong flavors, which may not appeal to everyone.
I forgot to take pictures of the food, but this trend of bold tastes started with the salsa, which was more like a very spicy pico de gallo with fresh tomatoes and very heavy use of lime juice.
The entrees were served in very large portions and I found my blue corn tortilla chicken enchiladas with tomatillo sauce to be very flavorful. The tortillas were thick, very good, and had a strong corn flavor, while the tomatillo sauce used fresh cilantro and had a nice bite to it without being overwhelmingly spicy.
I also got a steak Taco al Carbon on the side, which was fajita meat and grilled onions served in a fluffy flour tortilla. The tortilla was soft and fresh, while the grilled meat was nicely marinated if a little dry.
Unusually for Texas, they also served a lot of dishes with green chiles and also offered a pretty broad range of sauces in addition to the tomatillo, ranging from a red chile sauce with ground sirloin (what they called Tex-Mex) to a fire-roasted green chile sauce.
Finally, the decor was an eclectic fusion of a 1950's styling with strong, warm oranges and reds. There was an Elvis theme to the menu, which puzzled my dining party.
(It turns out that the original Chuy's was decorated with the $20 in the pocket of one of the owners. He returned with some black velvet paintings of Elvis and Stevie Wonder and Elvis fans began bringing in their own memorabilia.)
The Verdict
I've always found the areas around Austin and San Antonio to have excellent food, much better than around Houston and Dallas, with an often distinctly local character. These cities and the Hill Country around them somehow seem to breed places that serve great barbecue, Texas favorites such as chicken fried steak, and Tex-Mex.
The Tex-Mex in particular here at the intersection of the Anglo and Hispanic cultures is my idea of the ideal Mexican cuisine: a combination of strong flavors, fresh high-quality ingredients, and just enough spiciness to give the food some bite without overwhelming your palate with the heat.
The Mexican food in the rest of the US (even in much of Texas) is somewhat homogenized in comparison, and I just don't like "authentic" Mexican which seems lacking in flavor and tends to use what I consider lower quality meat, cheese, and tortillas.
Though I liked both restaurants, there's so much choice here that the next time in the area I'll probably sample other places. But I wouldn't be surprised if I returned to either Chuy's or The Salt Lick either. The service at both locations was simultaneously very efficient and very friendly.
As an aside, I'd also like to visit some of the local dancehalls in the surrounding Texas Hill Country, less for the dancing than because it has a remarkably high concentration of legendary country music venues such as Gruene Hall, Coupland Inn, Luckenbach Dance Hall, Floore's Country Store, and Club 21 of Uhland, TX. For dancing it looks like I'd be better off going to Graham Central Station (Pflugerville) or Midnight Rodeo in either Austin or San Antonio.
The Travel
Travel in January can be interesting. I knew enough to prepare for the worst in Austin, which coming from Maryland wasn't too hard. The temperature plummeted while we were there and Austin got socked by a nasty ice storm on the day we left (in fact, my original flight was cancelled). It's very flat through Texas all the way north through the Great Plains and into Canada, so you can get very sudden and drastic weather changes there.
I had hoped to eat at Cousin's Barbecue in DFW Airport on my way to Austin (I finally caught it on the way home), but barely had time to catch my connecting flight after the plane's nose gear on my inbound flight didn't extend during the first approach.
The pilot aborted landing and on the second try he got on the PA to explain all of this, and tell us that this would be the reason we might notice the emergency vehicles they had requested on the runway. When the flight attendants advised us to review the emergency procedures (I was sitting in an exit row), it was the first time I've ever read them with the idea that I might need to actually use them in the next 30 minutes.
We landed smoothly and the passengers spontaneously applauded, which just goes to show how a little perceived danger really focuses the mind.
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