Dine & Dash: Action along Austin Bluffs 🍽
Mini reviews of Kebab & Gyro House, Hotpot Story and Dazed Creations
Kebab & Gyro House
Owner Muhanad “Mo” Abu opened Kebab & Gryo House around a year ago, attached to his now-seven-year-old import retail store, Al Rahman Market International, at 3430 Austin Bluffs Pky.
Abu is Palestinian, originally from Haifa, Israel, and he moved to the States in his late teenage years. Through family already established in the area, he settled in San Diego, soon joining up with the U.S. military. He had an early passion for cooking, and had already begun a culinary education, which he furthered while in the service (including tours overseas) to achieve advanced accreditations. He tells us he’s a “master chef” with a proud smile, while checking in with us as we dine.
After 11 years active military, he resettled in Denver, where he operated a food truck for two years. He says he saved $400,000 from the venture, which became inspiration for brick-and-mortar. Flash forward to Kebab & Gyro House, and he already enjoys wide support, including from the Air Force Academy, for whom he caters 900 sandwiches weekly as part of a catering contract.
Abu’s clearly obsessive about his food quality, as he details for us how everything is made fresh from scratch, including the pitas and gyro meat (so he’s not buying a log to shave from commercially, which is common elsewhere). Everything comes from his recipes and he grinds and toasts his own spices in-house, telling us each dish receives a different custom blend. He even starts a discussion about online reviews, and the awareness of how damaging a bad review can be (even when ridiculous, from the 1-star vigilantes out there destroying local businesses for inane reasons), which makes him resolve to make everything coming out of his kitchen as perfect as can be. He’s intense, saying he doesn’t compromise on quality, even if it means raising prices to match his chef standards. (Sandwich combos with fries and soda drink are currently $15.99; entrée plates that include a main protein and sides are $25.99.)
In justifying some of the costs, Abu notes how they cook in lamb fat (something I’d discussed with Shah Kebab House back in May, in my review of it) and use ghee in place of butter for their baklava. We do notice a deep richness and unique finish flavor to our pistachio baklava at meal’s end, ostensibly from the ghee, though there’s also a perfume-y pop of rosewater in the mix.
With our mains, we don’t notice a vast departure from other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern renditions of these dishes, but there’s subtle touches that do taste different and give insight to Abu’s individualized Arabic culinary style. For the chicken shawarma, wrapped and toasted to a light crunch like a thin burrito, mayo-textured side garlic sauce heightens bites of the juicy chicken hunks rolled up with lettuce and tomato. A sauce Abu calls “mango” for its color, but actually has no fruit base, lends a not-unpleasant, faintly sour note on the fine falafel sandwich.
The lamb pieces on our tikka dish are excellent, tender with a light char and slight tanginess from some type of marinade (Abu didn’t elaborate when I asked) and mildly zesty seasoning taste. (You can add sumac from a shaker at the table if you want a little citrusy flavor.) We tear pieces of the house pita (a worthwhile $1 per piece upcharge if you want more; the first piece arrives with the dish) and run it through the pretty awesome house hummus and baba ganoush, which holds a big smoke flavor. We take bites with pickled carrot, onion and beet for acidity accentuation.
The go-for-first item, though, is the eponymous gyro sandwich, fat with the house-made beef-and-lamb gyro slices (thin themselves) layered on a warm, puffy pita. Garnishes include the garlic sauce, plus cooling tzatziki, lettuce, onion and tomato. The spices on Abu’s gyro meat tastes brighter than commercial versions.
The food here’s the star and Abu’s engaging personality is the show-seller. Ambiance otherwise feels like dining in the market-attached space it is, with supply boxes in plain view everywhere and humble plastic cutlery barely being up for the task of cutting through the food. Roam the grocery section while you await your meal to discover interesting Middle Eastern items you may wish to take home and experiment with, from dry and frozen goods to juice and candies. Or you can order through all the major delivery apps, and find some coupons in-store for some deals on that.
Hotpot Story
A mile up from the Austin Bluffs Parkway turnoff onto Barnes Road (at 5660 Barnes Road, near the Powers Boulevard intersection), you’ll find Hotpot Story, whose backstory I had a difficult time gleaning after trying to chat with a couple staff. The place is so well branded and designed I had the feeling it was perhaps a franchise concept, but it appears to be a one-of-one based on what I see on its website and with its business filings at the State. Cool — kudos people, you’ve built something badass. (So, rather than the biz backstory, I’m going to focus on our very enjoyable dining experience with this blurb.)
I’m reminded of meals in subterranean Tokyo spaces due to how tight the spacing is at Hotpot Story. There’s not an inch of unutilized space wall-to-wall, with diners sitting elbow-to-elbow at narrow booths or at the long L-shaped community counter built around a conveyor belt that cycles the optional ingredients around the room for grabbing. It’s sort of like dim sum dining off a cart, with an easy grab choose your own adventure. We’ll come back to that. Meanwhile I dig the cool black-and-white graffiti mural on one wall and the LED-lit, 3-D mountainscape on the other. The TVs are pretty pointless because you’ll be totally transfixed on your cooking pot anyway. And the location of one condiment station at the entryway creates a slightly odd bottleneck of those waiting to dine (in four comfy leather arm chairs), those garnishing plates, and staff trying to squeeze pushcarts stacked with bus tubs down the thin aisles. I kinda dig the mild chaos, though, which feels authentic to my foreign travel experiences, as I was saying.
One note of caution: I don’t recommend trying this with babies or toddlers, as I imagine you’d be hard-pressed to tend to their needs and your own cooking, all with limited space. So plan this for date night. Also note the stools are so tall in relation to the community countertop that you’ll barely fit your legs under; it’s snug, kind of like flying economy.
No matter, because so much interactive cooking fun and deliciousness awaits you once you finally settle in and order your base broth from around a half dozen options. Immediately, I wonder what I’m missing with the ones I don’t order, which just makes me wish to return often until I’ve tried them all. The cost on the base broths is an easy $5, and from there it’s a color-coded system of plates with different prices for meats ($5.99, like wagyu beef or sliced pork), seafood items ($4.99, like swai fish steaks or jumbo shrimp), “meatballs” ($3.99, from fish roe prawn paste to crab nuggets), vegetables ($2.99, from sliced lotus to enoki mushrooms) and noodles ($1.99, from udon to Korean rice cakes). In each category, there’s at least 12 items, making for around 75 total items you can grab from the belt as they pass by. Meaning if you do that formula from high school (which I long ago forgot) you can calculate the millions of potential hotpot variations here based on changing a single ingredient in different combinations.
Anyway, I go for the Hot & Spicy broth which lists red chiles and peppercorns, dates, goji berries, Chinese cinnamon and cardamom, bay leaves, beef tallow and bone stock and Shaoxing cooking wine. I wouldn’t call it “very spicy” as advertised, but if you eat the chile pods floating in it you will get lit up, and there’s a nice residual chile oil heat that builds, partly bound up in the oily components that float at the top of the boil. I won’t bore you with directions on how to turn on your burner and add ingredients at different times as the heat intensifies, because there’s handy instructions on the placemat in front of you. And after an initial minute or so of feeling like a rookie doofus (you might) you’ll start to get comfy with it, and by the end of meal one you could even feel like a pro. That is if you don’t overthink it and have regrets about what you did or didn’t grab and the ultimate hotpot you created. Hey, just another reason to go back and try it again.
I ended up grabbing a “seafood medley” bag pretty early on off the conveyor belt, so I opted to stay in that realm and skip the other meats, though I did grab some other fishy meatball items. I sought veggie lightening and freshness and some vermicelli noodles that sent mine in a pho direction. I also hit the condiment station pretty hard for various dips, including a peanut sauce, two chile sauces and sesame oil and sauces. My pot was so loaded by the end that I ended up shutting off the burner to cool it as much as I could before requesting a to-go container so I could remake the rest the next day at home. (Which I did, adding ramen noodles to it and getting a whole second meal out of it.)
Out the door for four we’re at $108 pre-tax and -tip and we’ve all stuffed our faces and left with the to-go containers for later. Which is to say for the hands-on experience, overall great flavor (everyone seemed content with their creations) and abundance of eats for the price, we’re quite happy. I watch other customers — strangers to each other — size up one another’s plate stacks and laugh at who got highest. I suspect the one guy with several meat items wasn’t laughing on the inside when his bill finally arrived. Either way, it would have been a good, organic PR moment had someone from the brand had a camera pointed that direction. So even if I don’t yet know Hotpot Story’s own story, I know enough to say I’m all-in, and you should be too after a visit.
Dazed Creations
Dazed Creations is located inside the year-old Five Star Food Stop multifunctional space that hosts a commissary kitchen, retail market and food vendors. The hub for more than 30 food trucks and individual brands is tucked away just out of road view, a block from the sharp Barnes Road and Austin Bluffs Parkway intersection. You enter into a small retail market and food court, which also hosts Papa’s Italian pizza and Nature’s Start Bread Company.
Drop in between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays, to grab a to-go pint of ice cream, ice cream sandwich or popsicle from a cooler. Or hit the counter for a scoop, sundae or shake, made-to-order, with an option to incorporate baked goodies from The Brownie Queen, who co-displays with the ice cream outfit.
Dazed Creations comes courtesy Caleb Chambley and co-owner Brent Cunningham while The Brownie Queen is baker Alea LoCascio, who’s also front house manager for the ice cream venture. She explains all that to me as well as emphasizing how everything’s made on-site in the commissary, including an array of freeze-dried candies (available on Amazon) that fill another whole retail display. One thing Five Star doesn’t yet have is a liquor license, so the flyer I spy for a boozy caramel bourbon chocolate chip ice cream made with Axe and the Oak whiskey is meant to direct people to select local liquor stores to find pints there.
We arrive after dinner at Hotpot Story, just minutes before closing, like big jerks. So LoCascio’s already sanitized the shake equipment, but she’s happy to still scoop ice creams for us. We go for the Banana Pudding, Ube Velvet and Fudge Packed, the latter paired with a dense, chewy and lavish brownie with thin, hatched icing atop. What to say about the ice creams other than the obvious that they’re cold, sweet and good? Perhaps by comparison to town litmus Josh & John’s, they taste a little sweeter on the whole and hold a more gummy, less quick-to-melt texture for the hard pack style. If you’re a fan of J&J’s Purple Mountain Majesty flavor, then go for the similar ube here (minus the raspberry truffles). I’m the one odd Southern-born person who isn’t banana pudding obsessed, so I’m glad one of the kids with us orders it for me to just try a bite. But I’m damn tempted to steal from the other kid with us just to get seconds on the brownie and chocolate. (I mean, hey, I paid, that gives me power to purloin, no?)
