Et Tu, Trudy's?

Monday was a school holiday for our oldest daughter and my husband decided to take the day off to spend with the three of us. We planned to go out to eat and then to go to the Texas State History Museum to view a special exhibit on aviation that is currently featured there. It has been a while since we ate at Trudy's, a local Tex-Mex joint with several locations around town, so we decided to make that our lunchtime meal. We set off in the late morning, headed for the University of Texas campus (where the museum is and where one of the locations of Trudy's may be found), a little hungry, but nowhere near ravenous. That was fine - I figured that, by the time we got a table and placed our order, we would be ready to eat. We pulled into the parking lot and were bemused by the lack of cars. Up to the restaurant we walked, hand in hand with our daughters, only to find that the UT area Trudy's doesn't open until 2 pm. The girls suggested we just wait the two hours (they don't really understand time yet, obviously) and then have lunch. Nah - that wasn't going to work for me (or shortly, for anyone else, once they realized they were starving).

Determined to have our meal at Trudy's, we set off for the North Star location - just a few miles up the road on Burnet. Upon arrival, we were relieved to discover that this restaurant was, in fact, open for business. We were promptly seated, our drink orders were taken and our friendly waitress informed us that they currently had their "specialty foods buffet" set up and we were welcome to "load up". While she retrieved our drinks, my husband checked out the buffet and pronounced it, "meh" with a shrug of his shoulders. When our waitress returned, I said, "I guess we just need a couple of menus so we can decide." She responded with, "oh, we don't have menus". Argh! Are you kidding me?!? All I wanted was the salad that I always get at Trudy's - this, in fact, being the menu item for which we had driven all the way into Austin. Now, obviously, I have some personal issues here, but let's just say that I was more than a little disappointed that I couldn't have what I wanted, not to mention the fact that we had passed the point of no return as far as feeding our children. They wanted something to eat and they wanted it right then. So, with my own "meh" and shrug of my shoulders, I stomped over to the buffet line with my oldest daughter and filled her plate and mine with Trudy's "specialty foods".

By the way, "specialty foods", in general, means "fried" at Trudy's. I had a mini fried avocado, a mini fried chicken taquito, fried coconut shrimp, fried chile relleno and fried corn nuggets. To be fair, they also had a number of other "off-menu" items such as meatballs in guajillo chile sauce, pasta with a chipotle cream sauce and a chicken pot pie, not to mention a rather meager salad bar. I actually had a small amount of salad with my lunch (nothing compared to my original plan of the Ensalada Grande with Habanero Honey Mustard dressing) topped with a mediocre dressing. The food tasted ok (at the time - my husband later thought he had gotten a touch of food poisoning), but I was already really disappointed in one of my favorite restaurants. First, finding one location with crazy hours (can you say drinking joint?) and second, finding the other location which, crazily, doesn't offer a la carte service during the week anymore. WTH?

Ah, well, personal issues aside, I still love you Trudy's, even if Monday turned out to be a bad day for enjoying your food (from the menu). Hopefully, I will get my Ensalada Grande fix sometime soon, though I think I will have to just stick with the south location from here on out. Such a bummer - at least the museum turned out to be a good choice. The kids enjoyed themselves and we managed to have a really fun family day together (despite the disappointing lunch).