Doggie Style
We have some ambivalence about reporting on a restaurant that features meat. You know, being vegetarians and all, it feels like we're kinda traitors to the cause. But we can't help but get excited when a place that specializes in pig parts on buns, offers up all of their specialities in non-pig-part options.
Enter Dog Almighty, located behind the new Brentwood Tavern at the Historic Farmer's Market at 6701 Burnet Rd. It a smallish, ultra-casual place featuring a ping pong table outside and a fusball table inside. There are crates of books for the kids to enjoy, as well. We love places that find ways to distract the little ones so we can stuff our faces. And we also love ping pong; not enough to be good, but enough to get excited by the presence of a table. We bet those Dog Almighty employees are excellent table tennis players.
They serve hot dogs here in case you couldn't guess. They also serve hamburgers, frito pies, veggie burgers, and chili. In fact, they've won awards for their veggie chili. Next time we are going for the "The Classic", a Texas-style serving of chili, cheese, mustard and onions. Why not be daring? But this time we played it safe and ordered the dot com veggie dog which features mustard, relish and onions. We added some ketchup because according to Nancy Reagan ketchup is a vegetable and we gotta get our veggies in. Now, veggie dogs are never going to be awesome, no matter what you dress them up with, but we did enjoy our hot diggity treat as much as one can enjoy soy texture covered in condiments. And we appreciated that there were two kinds of fries-- "improving the chances of finding the ones we like". It's clear that Dog Almighty relishes (pun!) the details of customer service, from the fun names of the hot dogs to the availability of entertainment to their commitment to contributing to the local economy by purchasing supplies from other local businesses. We can get behind that.
Really, there is only one thing we didn't like about Dog Almighty and that is the dessert. The one choice was a S'more-style brownie featuring a graham base, brownie middle, and intentionally burnt marshmallow topping. Sounds good, right? But it tasted kind of old and dry, not fresh, moist and chocolatey-chewy like it should be. Desserts are important to Austinist. Let's step up to the plate, people.
