Presenting Food Hawk: Because Sometimes You Just Don't Know Where to Eat

Central Texans have a new device for navigating their dining outings and it is called Food Hawk. The website describes its services as a tool "to help people select restaurants and find other area food resources based on their personal interests in cuisine, dining experience, location and price through a searchable Web site." Works for us. Hungry Austinites can search for restaurants by name, cuisine, or neighborhood. An advanced search allows one to enter a zip code, price range or even an ambiance. Are you in the mood for cozy or quaint? Black cloths or white cloths? Also notable is the listing of personal chefs, cooking classes, wineries, and farmer's markets.

It appears that Food Hawk began as the brain child of career librarian and author Dr. Judy Hamlin. According to her bio on the Food Hawk site, Dr. Hamlin "hopes to make dining in the region both more enjoyable for patrons and more profitable for restaurants and other food resources."

While expansive, Food Hawk does seem to missing some notable entries. For example, under a coffee and tea house search we failed to see such local favorites as Flipnotics, Quacks, Progress Coffee, or even Little City. Of course, you do see Ruta Maya, but then also listed is Frisco on Burnet. While we've never actually been to Frisco, we still feel confident in our assumption it's more of burger and pie place rather than somewhere to get your morning latte. And if you try a search for donuts (which is a listing on the cuisine pull down menu), you'll come up with nothing. If Austinist knows anything, it's that there are plenty of great places to get donuts in Austin. One wonders what the criteria was for listing on the site.

Still, it's a nice resource to have should you be determined to eat at a romantic location in south Austin with some outdoor seating, but not too expensive. Romeo's, anyone?