God Bless Hut's Indeed
Unless you just moved here, you know about Hut's Hamburgers, the bigger than a hole-in-the-wall but not really big, kinda divey but not really divey hamburger joint on 6th Street near Lamar. Austinist forgets about it a lot, but sometimes we get this huge Hut's craving, which is why this weekend we found ourselves sitting in a booth among the college pendants, sipping our gallon of soda and eagerly waiting (is that our food? is that our food?).
There's a lot of history about how Hut's came into existence, and you can read all about it on the menu, if you can stop reading the menu items, that is. There are a lot of burgers to choose from, and other items like chicken fried steak and....honestly we don't know because we think ordering anything but a burger here is like ordering a burger at a Mexican restaurant. Gourmet seems like the wrong word to use for these burgers because it's Hut's. So, we'll call them creative.
There's burgers with swiss and pineapple, with guacamole and salsa, with blue cheese, but our favorite is the Fat's Domino, which is covered in cajun spices, and topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, cheese, and jalapenos. We skip the mayo and mustard and opt for Hut's bar-b-que sauce, which has a kick. We're not sure how their veggie burger is 100% fat free and still tastes so damn good, and we ignore our friend who says, "It's because they fry them on the grill with the real burgers." We try not to think about stuff like that. We do entertain the idea of trying to pass this off as a "healthy" eating out excursion, but stuffing our face with gigantic peppered onions that have taken a grease bath quickly negates any health benefit of the veggie burger. They are so good, we do not care. We use an entire bottle of ketchup at our table of three.
The service is usually good at Hut's. We like that the waiters are laid back and that the prices are reasonable. It's a family place, you'll see kids with chocolate shake mustaches, so watch the f-bombs.
If you're so inclined, tell us your favorite Hut's burger. Or, tell us about another burger joint that has Hut's beat.
