Serrano’s Symphony Square on Red River

Yes, but what about the food?

linq: Serrano’s

Symphony Square is a sort of combination of two places, right on Waller Creek, off Red River and the sort of 11th or 12th street that plagues Austin. There is, there on Symphony Square, a building which seems affiliated with the Austin Symphony Orchestra and Perloo Union, at least based on its prominent signs stating same, and an installment of Local/Regional Chain Serrano’s.

I am not a fan, as a rule, of Waller Creek. It is not an ugly stretch of water, as a whole, but the part I see daily is where it intersects with our friend Sixth Street, and it is difficult to describe this quotidian view without using words like “cesspool” and “gross.” The Creek running, as it does, from North to South, the stretch immediately north of my daily rounds is pretty nice. Care has been and continues to be put into keeping the area pleasant, and the bit that flows near Symphony Square is certainly of this nicer character.

We were in Serrano’s for something fewer than five minutes. The view I had of the interior suggested that this was the correct amount of time to spend there. The patio outside, though, demanded lingering. The weather being wonderful, we sat at a little table and took in the Lunch Special while two doves, a grackle and a sparrow (we decided) went about bird business across the tiered stone steps that lead down to the creek on the Restaurant side. At the creek, they face a small but very compelling stage with a tiny balcony some ten feet above and to the right, and a picturesque stone bridge. A sign on the structure suggests that this area has been standing there, compelling viewers to wonder about the musical possibilities of a little Water Music since the late 1970s. It goes on to dedicate it to two driving founders of the ASOPU, and their dreams that made this little refinement of modern life possible.

I believe the consensus of the LNB staff present there that day was a general agreement.

We discussed a progression of logic and memetics as regards the evolution of ideas, and a suggestion of a theory of knowledge tangential to these, but still prenatal and gravid with the suggestion of future usefulness. We discussed a South American bird which makes a sound and vibration like a Cellular Telephone, and which has adapted to hiding in the purses of South American residents, and to a diet composed entirely of ossified gum and hairy mints. We spoke on the subject of the compulsions suggested by that little stage and the balcony above, and on the general pleasantness of the day and of the setting.

There was, as there so often is, food, I guess.

The food did not lodge in my mind in quite the way that the setting managed to. I think I had something with chicken. I think the day involved a burrito, but that it was not my burrito. I remember this, mainly, because I remember the look in the Grackle’s face as we considered advising the server to keep handy the remainder of the Donkey Smothered in Cheese, should hunger so dictate.

And we handled our obligations and still sat, soaking in the cool day, between rains, in the shade of the creek trees, as the dervish birds whiled away the afternoon at doubtless important tasks.

One Very Hot Chili out of a Seemingly Incongruous String of Them