Brick Oven Restaurant on 12th Street and Red River

Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been A Franchise of the Communist Party?

Linq: Brick Oven

As an alumnus of Book People, an Austin Establishment which doubles as an Institution, I have been given strong opinions regarding the legitimacy of chain stores in re their being worth my time to have opinions regarding, which sounds like it avoids ending with a preposition, but does not. The general opinion of the Book People management and staff, at least the party line, is that Chain Stores, to coin a phrase, Suck. This opinion is usually reserved for use against a particular rival book store chain, but it is a broad thought pattern, and it is difficult for a thinking person to spend much time working for Book People and fail to acquire at least some of this attitude. Thus, the question arose as to whether we should review, for example, a chain restaurant, on this web page. Should this be reserved for thoughts about Local Establishments alone?

JackHare and I had a basic disagreement about this, one which was easily resolved. He told me I was wrong, and I knew that this was the case, and so agreed quickly. This is not a collection of thoughts about Austin Originals, really. I will certainly endeavor to include as many as I feel appropriate, and I will always have a leaning in my heart toward them, but there is no reason why any purveyor of food should be verboten from these pages or from being thought about in print by us.

That said, I am puzzled by this restaurant.

There seems to be some distinction between this particular instance (and its two sisters) of the Brick Oven, and the David’s Original Brick Oven, which is on 35th street, and, you may notice, not listed on the web page which does include the one at which we dined, the one on 12th Street and Red River. Then, to complicate matters, the Brick Oven Headquarters, to whom one would write if one were interested, for example, in opening a location, is in Washington.

This bewilderment aside, the food is what one would expect, in a general sense, of an unspecialized Italian-type Restaurant in Texas. The cheese is plentiful. The meats are present. The red sauce seems to find its way into most orifices of most dishes. The salads are perfunctory, almost as if the jealous A-List cheese jealously keep the meager greens looking cheap and unprofessional, just to keep them off the marquis. The soup isn’t bad, but isn’t really anything to write home about. I had the minestrone and salad. Jack had something resembling cheese in a dish, which, he informed me, contained chicken as well, and had the word formagio in the name.

For desert, there is Cake, pie’s sad and neigh-useless cousin from the lowlands, the one whom everyone seems to love in spite of pie’s having all the talent, and cake having only more… prurient endowments.

From not-bad soup to regular-old cake, the place provides what you’d expect, without exception, top to bottom. Gosh. That sounds more negative than I mean it to, but the fact is, you don’t go to a place like the Brick Oven Restaurant’s 12th Street and Red River Location, a special instance from any point of view, and expect their local chef to produce you a masterpiece unique to the moment. You would go there because, if my experience is any indicator, you want a ramekin with cheese and noodles and some combination of white and red sauces, gooey and necessitating care so as not to drip on your tie.

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