Austin’s Hula Hut
The place is an Austin original, a one-off location at the end of Lake Austin, on a permanent pier. Fished there. Ate there a lot, back in the day. I also have one deep-set memory I want to excise.
This one been bugging me since the early fall, really just late summer. It’s a weather related bit. In fact, I thought about this every wintery onset, each year. There’s a moment where the weather changes, and the balmy nights and cold AC are replaced with frigid temperatures.
Austin’s Hula Hut
It was a November afternoon. We walked six or more miles, east loop of the hike and bike trail, back to Shady Acres, then hopped into her truckette, to make our way to the Hula Hut. Monday afternoon, mid-November, sweaty, and I was raggedly attired in a partial t-shirt and black shorts. Sandals. That was all.
At that time, the traditional repast was the Hula Hut’s Pu-Pu Platter, like a version of Polynesian-inspired TexMex appetizers, and maybe a dessert. Memory is not so clear. Ice tea used to arrive in a quart-sized plastic tumbler.
We were seated on the pier, the temperatures were in the 80s, as was the music, and then, looking westward, the surface of the lake, calm, serene, glass-like? There was a ruffle for a breeze. That breeze stiffened into a cold, north wind.
Across the water’s surface, it was easy to see, a cold front was blowing in, scheduled, predicted, predicated our walk and late lunch, and there it was.
Temperature on the dining dock dropped 20 degrees when that front blew right through. The wait staff hastily dropped the plastic coverings, the awnings on the sides, we paid and left, cranking the heater in the truck.
Winter arrived.
Austin’s Hula Hut
Austin’s Hula Hut
That one time, sitting on the pier/patio at Austin’s Hula Hut, every fall in Texas, I’m reminded of the sudden drop in temperature, and the ruffle of the water’s surface, just as the cold weather’s front arrived. It had been a steamy, warm, and this occurred just days before Thanksgiving.
Every season shifts, but living in Austin for so long, then just down the road in San Antonio? I’m reminded, each year about that perceptible shift, the moment winter arrives.
The Hula Hut, was, is, I’m unsure of the current allegiances, and corporate hierarchy, but originally, it was a spin-off from Chuy’s, back before that was a national chain of TexMex places.
The myth was that original Chuy’s on Barton Springs, know for roasting Hatch green chilis in season? Hours before opening, lacking any internal or coherent artistic direction, several Austin garage sales were scavenged for “artwork,” hence the black velvet Elvis and other tacky crap. It became a thing.
There’s one other Hula Hut story, not mine to tell, but he can’t locate it at the moment, and his verbal delivery is far superior to how this looks, but I’ll try.
Late 90s maybe? Early double aughts? Y2K? Trailer park in old South Austin — before trailer parks were cool? The unofficial Hula Hut uniform was shorts, sneakers, and a Hawaiian shirt. It was a crowded holiday weekend, maybe, July 4th? Neither one of us can isolate a date, but he was between girlfriends, until I married him. Back then, we were meeting a large group, think that Virgo was there. She might know.
Bubba showed up late, pre-cell phone era, although, to be honest, by that point, we had cell phones, but we wouldn’t waste minutes on table reservations at dive bars. As is his usual style, he showed up a little late, we were already seated and enjoying superlative chips and hot sauce — Hula Hut/Chuy’s used a garlic-forward, citrus-like fresh pico de gallo as the requisite table-side hot sauce — and waiting on Bubba.
“I’m looking for a guy, ponytail, earrings, dressed like he works here?”
Hostess shrugged, waved a menu at the crowded deck.
“You’re cute. He probably asked you your birthday.”
Hostess gestured, led him right our table.
True story. I just can’t get the corroborating people to agree on a signed version.
Austin’s Hula Hut
Besides, that’s not the point. What was most memorable was that weather shift, sitting there, after a one, hot walk in the fall weather, waiting on a cold front, then, a visual just as it actually arrived, that afternoon.
Winter arrived, for someone living in a tiny trailer along the shores of Austin’s Town Lake.
