4917 Airport, 451-9500
Open daily 7am-10pm If Sixth Street is Austin’s official Entertainment District, Airport Boulevard
is our unofficial Entertainment Recovery District (ERD). The diagonal stretch
of road between the Interstate and Highway 290 developed a distinguished
reputation for lowbrow post-club eating among nightclub refugees and UT
students. After a long night of drink specials and hand stamps, still-buzzing
clubgoers take their ringing ears to Mrs. Johnson’s Doughnuts for a pre-crash
blast of sweet, starchy grease. Mornings after find the same groups filtering
into Tamale House #3 for cheap breakfast tacos and hangover comparisons between
low-flying aircraft. So when El Gallo Jiro opened up shop, it stood to further
develop the ERD with an option for sit-down Mexican food. A bright new sign and
strings of all-weather vinyl flags announced their house specialties —
mesquite-cooked fajitas and steaks. Everything looked promising.
Unfortunately, several visits to the new kid on the block have proven
consistently under-whelming. El Gallo tends to underspice and mis-cook both its
specialties and standard dishes of the TexMex songbook. Their trademark fajitas
apparently hadn’t spent much time in the house marinade, as both chicken and
beef variations fell on the neutral side of the taste continuum. Other grilled
dishes (Steak Do�a Lolita, seven steak, and carne asada) were also stringy and bland, despite being covered with grilled vegetables.
Vegetables that survive long cooking (onions, bell peppers) were barely shown
the grill, while the more fragile tomatoes were overcooked until sticky.
There’s hope that these conditions are just part of a new restaurant’s growing
pains, but only time will tell. I hope so — a good Mexican grill named after a
vicious chicken would suit that neighborhood just fine. — Pableaux
Johnson
This article appears in January 19 • 1996 and January 19 • 1996 (Cover).