Upscale, Sit-Down Burgers

Wholly Cow Burgers

619 Congress, 425-0811
www.whollycowburgers.com
Monday-Thursday, 10am-10pm; Friday-Satur­day, 10am-11:30pm; Sunday, 11am-8:30pm

Wholly Cow Burgers won a "Best of Austin" Critics Pick last year for "Best Eco-Ambitious Burger Counter" for its first location on South Lamar, and it's opened a new store smack in the heart of Downtown Austin – right next door to the Hideout on Congress; right where you need such an eatery to be if you're a budget-conscious carnivore who prefers meat not from some megafactory and not loaded with antibiotics and so on. Jeff Woodard's the main man with the plan for this endeavor, but we spoke with co-owner Garth Miller, who was working behind the counter the night we happened to stop in and see what's up.

"The whole idea behind the restaurant was to have simple kinds of comfort food," says Miller, "to offer burgers, Philly cheese­steaks, Reubens, but to make it all a little healthier. People have said it's more of a gourmet burger. Our beef is 97% lean, and the cows are grass-fed from start to finish; the only other thing they're given is apple-cider vinegar. They come from Fredericksburg, just 70 miles away, from Rocky Hill Orchards."

So, among the other items, you can get a damned good burger for around $8, the kind of burger – actually a little better, in our estimation – that you might get at a much fancier sit-down place. But here it's in a fast-food setup, in the former Pita Pit. And on South Lamar, it's in a former convenience store. "I think there's merit to starting smaller and growing as opposed to getting into a place where you're over your head," says Mill­er. "Like how people will work out of a trailer for a while – because Austin's such a scene for good food. And a trailer breaks those boundaries of people thinking you have to go to a brick-and-mortar to get excellent cuisine. Not that brick-and-mortars aren't kind of everybody's ultimate goal, but you get a lot of cool businesses starting out in trailers. I think this city really thrives on stuff like that, and you don't really find it anywhere else."

And why Downtown?

"We'd been looking for something in this area," says Miller, "because South Congress has, like, a flood of everything down there, but Downtown was needing something like that. And people seem to be pretty excited about a place like this – this week is only our soft opening, and we've been packed every day." – Wayne Alan Brenner