Hoover's Cooking

2002 Manor Rd., Austin, TX - (512) 479-5006

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Posted By Michael Stern on 1/29/2002 8:13:00 PM

“Our commitment is to provide good, homemade foods at a good value,” says Hoover Alexander on the front of the menu of Hoover’s Cooking, a restaurant that calls itself The Good Taste Place.

We say that Mr. Alexander makes good on his promise. His spacious restaurant is a place to go for large portions of Texas comfort food. Without flourishes or frills, but with genuine expertise born of a childhood that Alexander describes as filled with mom’s home cooking, this kitchen knows how to make hungry people happy.

We knew we were in for a bigger-than-life treat as soon as our glass of lemonade arrived. In fact, it arrived not as a glass, but as a pitcher with a straw. We had to ask if a glass would be forthcoming; our waitress told us that the pitcher IS the glass: a quart of lemonade to be drunk straight from the tankard. And it is good lemonade – sweet, fresh-squeezed, refreshing.

The choice of meals is wide. Hoover’s has its own smokehouse, perfuming the parking lot outside, from which come pork ribs, Elgin sausage, highly-spiced Jamaican jerk chicken, and lesser-spiced (but nonetheless delicious) regular-spiced barbecue chicken. In addition to the smoked fare, the menu lists chicken fried steak, meat loaf, catfish, and an array of sandwiches that range from a meatless muffaletta (made with a portobello mushroom) to half-pound hamburgers. On the side of any meal, you choose from a large selection of vegetables that include chunky mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, black-eyed peas, sweet and hammy mustard greens, crisp-fried okra, and jalapeno-accented creamed spinach. The vegetables are so good, and served in such abundance, that Hoover’s offers a three or four vegetable plate, sans meat.

Scorecard

Overall: Legendary - Worth driving from anyplace

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"A tall, cool one is an essential part of the Hoover's experience. This pitcher is a single serving!"
Michael Stern

"Austin is chicken-fried steak country. Hoover's serves one of the best in town. Behind the crisp-fried steak are chunky mashed potatoes, a bowl of gravy, and creamed spinach."
Michael Stern

"Hoover's vegetables are so good that many customers make a meal of them and forgo any "main course." Here we have black-eyed peas and macaroni and cheese, mustard greens and fried okra."
Michael Stern

"Hoover's is a simple place with honest food at decent prices. What's better than that?"
Michael Stern