Lucky J’s
Jason T. Umlas
www.luckyjs.com
5703 Burnet Rd.
Austin TX 78756

Chicken for strength
Waffles for speed

April in Austin Texas is as good a place as any, and that includes Paris. There are bluebonnets. The weather is wonderful. The grackles are noisy. I went to Austin to visit Amy’s Ice Creams, and spend time with the nice people who started Amy’s.

Austin Texas has many charms but the city seems determined to obliterate as many of them as possible in the name of progress. Right now there is a dispute between the mainstream restaurants and the interesting collection of trucks and sidewalk vendors.

The established restaurants are burdened with regulations. Most of the street vendors are immigrants and they cheerfully ignore regulations that would get a normal restaurant closed by the determined agents of the city and county health departments. This dispute calls for the wisdom of Calvin Trillin.

While meeting with Amy and discussing new flavors and happy cows we noticed an irregular amount of activity across the street. My friend Rob now runs a flock of sophisticated white tablecloth restaurants but he is a chowhound who can’t resist the smell of mesquite. People at Amy’s said that the place across the street was another “street vendor.”

Rob and I were curious so we hopped into a rental car and drove across Burnet Road, which is what Texans do when they want to cross the street. Lucky J’s sells barbqued chicken and waffles. “Chicken for strength and waffles for speed” said a sign.

Barbequed chicken and waffles is what restaurant people call “a concept” and its making largely unacknowledged progress in black neighborhoods and hipster enclaves.

Inside a small lunchwagon was a man who said hello. “You don’t sound like your from Texas?” I said.
“I’m from New York” said Jason T. Umlas.
Rob and I looked at each other like detectives watching a case fall into place. “Did you go to Stuyvesant or Science or something like that?” I asked, naming New York’s two most selective high schools.
“Yeah, I went to Stuyvesant and then I did East Asian Studies at Brown. I lived in Tokyo for six months and moved to LA. I worked for five years as a chef and executive chef but my girlfriend and I couldn’t imagine staying in LA so we moved here.”

Rob sheepishly admitted his own background “Actually I went to high school in Manhattan and college at Yale.”

We ordered what the ex-New Yorker suggested. I’m not a big fried chicken person so I had to ignorantly hack my way through the crust. The chicken was okay. Rob disappeared and returned with two sauces that transformed the chicken into something extraordinary.

“This is great.”
Rob and I decided to keep driving and eating, which are always good things to do in Texas. I said, “I’m leaving the chicken scraps on the hood of the car.” We drove down Burnet Road and Rob said “The entire neighborhood smells like fried chicken.”

We couldn’t cross the oncoming traffic to visit a Czech calleche bakery. In Texas, Czechs rival Germans as culinary antecedents and every Texan has a favorite bakery for these stuffed pastries. All those bakeries are located in distant small towns. Rob said we would come back tomorrow.

Then we pulled into Taco Deli. Rob ordered a taco and at his suggestion I ordered a soft taco. Both were good. We were in a chowhound groove. Then we got back in the General Lee and drove to South Congress. Rob was staying at the superhip San Jose Motel. I enjoyed the street scene from the Motel’s open air bar/coffee bar.

We got a phone call from Amy asking where we were and we zoomed off to Uchi, the city’s fabulous fusion sushi restaurant. That meal took hours. It was mystifying that so many people who looked like they had not much money could eat at such a primo retaurant. Rob picked out wines and I drank slowly, but I drank slowly for hours. By the end of the evening I was slowly glowing.

The next day it was off to tiny Smithville to deliver tables and chairs to be put in storage. We had lunch at Sherry’s, a restaurant located in a double wide trailer. I had the Fiesta Steak a la Queso. A fiesta steak is something in between a minute steak and a hamburger. The Queso was a watery cheese sauce dotted with peppers. The dish came with buttered potatoes, fried okra, buttered toast and a complimentary cupcake.