The Frisco Nighthawk

A Facelift, New Digs, Still a Place You Should Go

linq: The Frisco

My first experience with the Frisco was several years ago. I was involved in a theater production at a little theater place next door, and between acts we would sneak over and buy sodas, and sneak them backstage. The Frisco’s building is now yet another pharmacy, of the type found by the dozens in almost every city across the country. When I saw that the place was closing, I was glad that I had started attending semi-irregularly, and had wrung as much joy out of it as I had. Naturally, there are those who have derived decades more than I had, but I did not feel cheated, just that I wished they would open up in a larger place, maybe a mile up the road.

Imagine my surprise, then, when they filled the hole that Curras left, right up the street.

The place is the same, relatively, although they had a little rough patch just after they opened. The fare is fine, and they will bring you chopped steak and boiled vegetables on a plate. I mean, that’s why you go there, right? You want chopped steak or a fine burger, or, if you’re awake early, something to break fast, you head on in and enjoy the comfort of the new place.

No, to be honest. That’s not why you go, and we both know it. Do I have to enumerate the wonders? Let me name just two. They are Strawberry and Icebox Chocolate. The whipped cream is an inch thick and the filling is creamy and wonderful. Words being worth, as they are, one one-thousandth of a picture, I will save you the trouble and let James (of whom I am the Dad, as per my nom de écran) explain.

The point, as it so often is, is pie.

One daily vegetable special that we’re out of, of eight daily vegetable specials.

Hoover’s Cooking

Hoover’s Doesn’t Suck

And with that line out of the way, I’m going to spend less time on the food than on the restaurant itself, beginning with a couple of things that are not remotely the fault of Hoover’s and entirely unfair to bring up at all.  The first of these would be the physical establishment itself, located in a sort of strip-mall-esque shopping center; everything about the tone and mood of the place screams that it ought to be located in something more like a, if not actually an old refurbished, barn, but unfortunately they’re stuck with a building more evocative of a former Payless Shoes.

The other unfair quibble is that the neighborhood around it is dominated — visually and seemingly spiritually — by the Texas State Cemetery, a necropolitan sprawl occupying several city blocks, not all of them contiguous, so that when you think you’ve passed the boneyard, another arm or annex suddenly turns up around the corner.   Between blocks of tombstone residency are weathered, older, Chainsaw-evocative homes presumably for the living, and an unsurprising prolificacy of memorial carvers and mortuary services, giving the experience of driving around looking for the place an inevitably funereal feel difficult to shake off on arrival.

Once inside, though — and into the realm of things which are actually related to the eatery under consideration — the down-home charm is immediately, even aggressively apparent.  From the six-pack condiment holders, including a jar of pickled peppers, to the brown butcher paper covering the tables in lieu of placemats and creating the impression that the foodservice might not involve plates, Hoover’s would like to cheerfully pin your shoulders to the floor and scream in your face that this is homestyle, SOUTHERN food dammit.

But at least they deliver on that.  Unlike any number of other places in Austin, Hoover’s offers what they offer without trying to force a broadened palate upon us provincial Philistines — just solid, honest food of the type where the only problem is, seven or eight hours later you’re hungry again.

About the service I can’t comment, since the place was full near to capacity at the time we visited and I could hear behind me the steady drone of a manager getting on the servers’ asses, in that managerial way that helpfully slows the servers down and lowers their inclination to be friendly, so I’m driven to overlook any lapses of service that occurred at that particular hour, only to note that yeah, a couple of lapses did occur.

But none of it detracts in the slightest from the charm of Hoover’s we’re-sure-homemade attitude and the true attraction of the place, excellent homestyle food in decent portions for a reasonable price.  So, four pickled peppers out of five, and a hearty recommendation to check the place out when you’re in a mood for a good no-nonsense lunch or dinner.

Hoover’s Cooking

A Place Whereby People Obtain Food
Linq:Hoover’s

I’m fond of Hoover’s. I know, that’s not a revolutionary opinion, and it’s not one that will start any fires out of spite, either, but I like to say it online and I like that, at least in theory, I am saying it to person or persons who did not have that information prior. Hoover’s is an establishment which can engender fondness.

Whew. Feels good to get out of that closet, let me tell you.

When I go to Hoover’s, I am not shy about ordering catfish. I’ve worked my way slowly around the menu from the chicken fried steak to the meatloaf, and I wind up back at catfish, because, really, the entree is kind of fungible. They make fine and tasty food which is precisely what you order. You will not be surprised. You will not order meatloaf and get a reduction of escargot au vin on a bed of crème anglaise. If you want adventure, go elsewhere. If you want solid food, that’s fine, but you go to Hoover’s for the side dishes.

I don’t, but you can. At any given moment, they offer between eight and twenty side dishes, any one of which will warm you to your cockles (if you roll like that) and complete your dish. There is no magic formula, although they try to suggest things, but you don’t need to be told that you want their macaroni & cheese. You know this, deep in your heart, and no coercion from an inanimate menu-type object will convince you more. Go ahead, get any one of them, and you’ll be happy. I won’t. I don’t roll like that. My favorite of the sides oscillates between the squash, because I never get enough squash, and the mustard greens, which rate their own paragraph.

The mustard greens are wonderful. They come in a little bowl, chopped all to hell and cooked in a sweet liquid that hovers among the flowers and tinkles raindrops of mildly-sweet greens over the fairy-flecked ground, swinging through the treetops of the (in my case) catfish filet and slamming, echoing, off the broccoli jungle.

I really dig the mustard greens, but they aren’t why I keep coming back.

I come back because I am one of the sad few who noticed that, in this world, the supply of really good pie is dwindling. If you don’t make it your damn self, and I do from time to time, you can get pretty hard pressed to obtain even a single slice of the wonderful stuff, unless you go to Hoover’s and ask the right question on the right day. That question is “what kind of pie do you have,” and that day is the one upon which the answer includes the words “sweet” and “potato.”

Need I continue? Must I extoll the virtues of the tight slabs of orange wonder dolled out by Hoover’s on a regular basis? Do you really need to be told that a fine pie hides behind the famously comfortable food at Hoover’s? Yeah, you do, and here’s why: Unless you keep the sapphire of the pie in your mind through your entire Hoover’s experience, you will try to save room, and you will fail. It will be a delicious failure, and until you’ve been whisked into the pie via the highway of your fork, you will be unconscious of its allure, but it is there, and now you know, and the rabbit hole goes precisely as deep as a pie.

I’m going to say it again: pie. Pie pie pie pie pie.

4 Grapes out of 7.