Texas Embassy

I love what you’ve… done with your hair?

Linq:  Texas Embassy

You know that friend? The one who took that lifestyle choice that you couldn’t exactly get behind, but you really, really wanted to be supportive anyway? Maybe it was a political shift that put them at odds with your particular demographic. Maybe it was a new mode of dress and speech that makes you feel uneasy in public. Maybe it was a change in religion that makes it difficult to be a human nearby. Maybe they gave up animal products and have to harass every member of every staff of every store you go into, so as to make sure that none of the neckties worn by the lunching execs are silk because that’s cruel to worms.

That’s how it feels, going in to Texas Embassy.

In that location once lived our friend, Habana Calle 6. We got along fine, and we’d drop in from time to time because Habana Calle 6 was a bunch of fun. We could always get plantains, and Pulled Pork and taro, and then laugh about how funny it was that Habana Calle 6 served sauce called Mojo sauce (until it came and we were reminded of precisely why it was so called and sung it praises loud and long). We could listen to the music and imagine that we were in the far-away land of South Congress, surrounded by the exotic trees of the Great Outdoors nursery, and the drifting sounds of people shopping for twee crap up on the North End of the So Co, all while enjoying what I consider to be one of the finer patios in Austin Downtown Waller Creek faux-Riverwalk Dining.

And then, one day, began a remodel. Things changed. The tunnel leading over to the dance club was open only sporadically. Then, the sign changed. Habana Calle 6 started insisting on being called Texas Embassy, and stopped serving half the menu, for “reasons.” Then, the menu changed entirely. The food became distinctly different. Fried chicken and relative steak ruled the bill of fare. I’ll admit, their fried chicken wasn’t bad, but it smacked of the amateur and the nouveau gras. This chicken wasn’t quite right. No elderly relative, real or fictitious, had given this recipe to anyone, no secret herbs were included, no mystery surrounded any part of the chicken, bread or mustard-based dippin’ sause. This was food to be consumed nearly unconsciously while devouring The Game took up the prime spot in the brain. Nothing to complain about, mind you, but nothing to write home about either (hi, Mom!).

We entered their mysterious confines twice. The chairs were the same. The waitstaff, aside from some curiously callipygian costume changes, was the same. The music changed, to the point that each part of the restaurant played a different kind of generic boilerplate Sports Bar music, each insulated from the rest, giving it the Frankenstein quality of being four or five different sports bars that had a large, weird, bastard child who happened, quite by accident, to look kind of like our old friend.

We went back today with a duplicitous goal in mind. I suggested it because I wanted this to be fresh in my mind as I dissected the corpse of our bud, Habana Calle 6, or, as he seems now to insist he be called, The Texas Embassy.

We sat down, and I looked at the menu, and there, in bold, beautiful letters, set out in the carefully familiar font, was the ghost of that wonderful Habana menu. That old Cuban Spanish floated up and kissed my eyelids, and I shed a gleeful tear at the sight of the familiar favorites.

Someone heard my prayers, and the ghost of Habana Calle 6 seems to be haunting this new Texas Embassy. That, or, I suppose, they tired of being asked for the Ropa Vieja when they had stopped its production. And so, the menu lives on.

If you get a chance, and you happen to be there on a Habana night, try anything with the Mojo Sauce on it, particularly the fried taro with same. You cannot go wrong. Their house dressing has a little bit of that magic snuck into it, making even their salads (you can get lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and your choice of avocado or not) a thing of beauty. The old place seems to be living, in spite of the sign. I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to when or why the menu changes, but I don’t care. There were plantains. There was Mojo sauce. My afternoon was beautiful.

Hare Rama out of Wo0OOoohSpooky.