Themed restaurants normally only have one thing in common – They suck. The food is a mediocre afterthought and the menu is overpriced. Take Hard Rock Café, Hollywood Planet, or any of the gazillion Jimmy Buffett themed restaurants as an example. All have menus that practically mirror each other with the same sad offerings of processed chicken fingers and soggy quesadillas at high prices. Management is more concerned with selling souvenirs to tourists than serving quality food.
I was expecting the same results with The Hobbit Café in Houston when my brother-in-law suggested it for lunch. Still, I went along with and even encouraged his choice. Something about the 40 year old restaurant had to be original. The Hobbit Café opened before most of today’s themed tourist traps were even in the ideation phase and before the book really became popular through the movies.
The restaurant is pleasantly the exact opposite of most themed restaurants (minus the high prices). I saw only one souvenir for sale – a rather bland looking blue t-shirt with a simple, white screen-print logo. The décor is not over the top but a tasteful blend of memorabilia both old and new from the beloved Middle Earth books and movies, the highlight being the realistic statue of Gollum lording over the restaurant interior. While it isn’t exactly a Hobbit hole, the inside is quaint and comfortable. What the restaurant lacks in space indoors, it makes up for with generous shaded patio seating to catch the afternoon warmth on that Hobbit skin.
Most importantly the food and drink menu shines in pure Hobbit fashion. The menu resembles a gastro-pub with a variety of Texas pub-fare – a blend of burgers, sandwiches, seafood, and Tex-Mex. The quality and creativity behind each offering mirrors the best in the current gastro-pub craze, and the quantities are enough to fill even a Hobbit (they eat six times a day). The burgers are at least a half-pound with toppings heaping onto the plate. The sandwich selection features a variety of deli-style sandwiches, many heavy on the vegetarian side with main ingredients like avocado, alfalfa sprouts, and tabouli. Each is a heaping mound of food that would bust any person’s belly and fill a Hobbits until second lunch.
Mrs. G. and I split the Salmon Burger (grilled wild salmon patty with lettuce, tomato, red onion and dill dressing) and the Black and Blue Burger (Cajun seasoned burger, blackened and topped with sautéed bell peppers and onions and blue cheese dressing) served with a side of onion rings. The Salmon Burger was ripe with fresh flavor from the wild salmon and dill dressing. The Hobbit Café didn’t cut any corners and used the more flavorful and sustainable fresh salmon over the cheaper farm-raised version which closer resembles Uruk-hai (filthy mud-born creatures). The Black and Blue Burger burst with flavor from the spicy Cajun sauce to the creamy blue cheese dressing to the crunchy sautéed peppers and onions. The onion rings were equally as legit – hand-battered, mouthwatering, large rounds dipped in a sweet batter of medium thickness. They were so good that when mine were finished, I helped myself to Mrs. G’s when she wasn’t looking.
The beer selection is filled with items crafty and big. Not a single big three domestic international was found on the menu. Those watered down products were left for the army of dead in Dwimorberg. Instead, the beer menu is stacked with varieties full and bold with ABVs high enough to please any craft beer enthusiast and to help put a Hobbit down for his afternoon nap. In fact, I needed one after a pint of Southern Tier Old Man Winter.
There’s a reason Hobbit Café has sustained the test of time – It’s awesome! Instead of becoming just another themed restaurant, management has built a restaurant fit for a Hobbit. Come for dinner or lunch and fill up on enough quality food and drink to fill you up. Or, if you are a Hobbit, enough to hold you over until the next meal.
Photo credits go to Danielle Seaman. Nerdy Hobbit reference credits go to Charlie Seaman.