Welcome back to The Strip Club, highlighting Austin’s destination strip malls. Where else can you wash down Jerkules sauce with a Minecraft Creepertini? Stare down an inanimate pig while eating a pulled pork sandwich? Watch a parrot open its cloaca onto an old issue of the Chronicle? Lizards and wizards! It’s the Lone Star Center!
Fantastical creatures are in abundance at the Lone Star Center, and Emerald Tavern Games & Cafe is its unicorn – an upside-down-world Cracker Barrel for board games with the bright ambience of a European castle tour gift shop.
Walking in, you’re greeted by a retail section with games for purchase (or rent) – everything from Pandemic: On the Brink and Mansions of Madness to Castle Panic and Kraftwagen – to play at tables (a $45 reservation gets you six hours and free rental from their game library) built for eating and drinking to your lionhearted content, all while lost in your very own role-play fantasy world.
On a typical Saturday night, this pub is teeming, and as I’m waiting for a table, I notice a large jar of Dungeons & Dragons dice on the bar next to their “D20 Menu,” which gamifies your buzz: In exchange for $12, you roll the 20-sided die, and your numerical result designates which thematically named elixir you imbibe – Potion of Weakness, Bardic Inspiration, A Wizard Did It, etc. – and bonus! You get to keep the icosahedron as a souvenir.
Just as I’m about to cast fireball with the bone of drunken destiny, I’m whisked to my table by a waiter who has a multicolored ponytail and the wide, almond-shaped eyes of an elf. As I’m seated, I hear a woman at the next table exclaim, “It’s a weird, like, forest-y creature with horns!” Offended, I glance in her direction, but then realize she’s talking about someone else.
The menu is expansive, and the waiter has my back: In addition to a full English breakfast on weekends, there’s fish and chips, steak and ale pie, bangers and smash, burgers, paninis, salads, and Goblin Kabobs, which are his favorite, because they “slaughter them in-house.”
A Grimm vision, but I’m more inclined toward the short rib panini, which looks good until I notice it’s topped with “Jerkules sauce,” and I’m permanently scarred by visions of He-Man polishing his banister to the medieval lute music that’s playing over the loudspeaker in the men’s room.
There are seasonal drinks, like Frog Water, Creepertini, and the DK (Donkey Kong) Latte, but since this is the only restaurant in Texas that’s 86’ed a wine list in favor of a mead program, I take the sales pitch. Sold by the glass, bottle, or sealed to-go – including selections from regional makers like Valkyrie’s Kiss Mead in New Braunfels and Texas Mead Works in Seguin – it’s fruity, spicy, herby, and honeyed, with high alcohol content.
Emerald Tavern is an Austin original that’s perfect for a time when we could all use more escape in our lives.
Too sweet for goblin meat, so I opt instead for a draft beer and some fish and chips. Passable pub grub, but unfortunately the waiter is too busy courting a maiden in the gift shop to honor my pressing need for malt vinegar, and my “chippy tea” turns tepid, alongside my enthusiasm for an umpteenth game of Connect 4.
My 9-year-old drops a six-word review: “Good food, great games, terrible service.” The food and service are beside the point: People are here to play games in a convivial, inclusive, and laid-back environment while getting drunk and fed. It’s a never-ending story for an underserved community, a lucrative business model, and an Austin original that’s perfect for a time when we could all use more escape in our lives. Totally worth checking out.
Walking the mall, it becomes apparent Lone Star Center is full of conundrums: Gabrielle’s Salon & Extensions Boutique has headless mannequins standing in the window, Austin Foot & Ankle Center advertises “Walk-ins Welcome,” and there’s the ongoing debate around keeping animals as pets or eating them.
If you’re on the side of interspecies coexistence, Nissi Vegan Mexican Cuisine (which sounds like an oxymoron) is the place for you. Fully skeptical of vegan anything, I order the Taquiza (five street tacos) filled with their meatless birria and al pastor – and it’s stunning how well these taquitos mimic their meaty Mexico City originals, especially when tucked into two corn tortillas con todo. ¡Que rico!
Across the way, Zookeeper Exotics brings the zoo to you, with their assortment of less-tasty, down-menu pets like the Argentine black and white tegu, yellow Sub-Saharan uromastyx, and blue iguana. The pet shop boys all look like they could play the orchid thief in a community theatre adaptation of Adaptation, and as I’m side-eyeing a lizard resting peacefully on a bed of lettuce (another vegan), my other eye spies a $9,500 wall-hanging taxidermy-style dragon head sculpture for sale that I can’t believe hasn’t already been acquired by Emerald Tavern, Inc.
Idling toward the exit, I see a stack of Chronicles under some birdcages, which seems like an odd spot for a distribution point, but then I notice they’re lining the bottom, and recall the humble roots of fish wrap. As if you need another reason to support free, independent journalism.
After looking at God’s creatures and a barrel of $2.50 pig ears for sale by the register, my tummy’s growling, so I head to SLAB BBQ to get rid of the vegan aftertaste. Sitting across the parking lot from an unmarked pig statue (abandoned by former tenant Texas Rib Kings), SLAB specializes in “sammiches” – the star of the menu being the McDowell (a McRib named in homage of 1988’s Coming to America), which was immortalized by Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives in 2019 – but as I’m going hog wild on their P.I.G. pulled pork sandwich with mustard slaw and backyard red sauce, a side of twice-cooked potato casserole, and their decadent BBQ nachos (brisket + queso = heaven), I gaze out the window to see the inanimate Napoleon looking forlorn. I briefly question the ethics of eating an animal that’s smart enough to play video games and reflect on the prescience of Orwell before finishing the flesh.
Finally (and technically not in the strip mall proper), do yourself a favor and get into the Dude burger at Lebowski’s Grill inside Highland Lanes (open until at least the end of the year, when a condo development will reportedly wipe it out), which sits alongside the mythical Dart Bowl enchiladas of yore: a 1/3 lb. of Angus beef burger with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, mustard, and mayo commingling on a perfectly greasy bun. A perfect game. This is the cheeseburger of my childhood, and like The Big Lebowski‘s Walter Sobchak once said, “You’re goddamn right I’m livin’ in the fucking past.”
Which reminds me of another line of his that’s been stuck in my head for about nine years now: “Shut the fuck up, Donny!”
Lone Star Center
9012 Research Blvd.
This article appears in July 18 • 2025.