Restaurant Review: Austin’s Very Own Saltt
Gulf Coast cuisine served with a smile
Reviewed by Melanie Haupt, Fri., Dec. 20, 2024
Down in Port Arthur, 90 miles east of Houston, there’s a little counter-service restaurant on Ninth Avenue called Bruce’s Seafood Deli. Bruce’s offers a variety of iterations on specific aquatic proteins, namely shrimp, catfish, and oysters. Alongside those cornmeal- and tempura-battered delights, Bruce’s serves french fries, egg rolls, and fried rice.
I’ve not been to Bruce’s, but I suspected I know someone who has, so I reached out to my friend Keith, the drummer for Austin’s Southern swamp-funk-soul band Shinyribs, since they gig all over Texas and enjoy visiting niche restaurants while on the road. Sure enough, he connected me with Mason Hankamer, the band’s bass player, who’s very familiar with Bruce’s.
“It’s a solid seafood spot,” Hankamer told me via text. “Been there forever. It’s cheap and consistently good.”
While there haven’t been many options for Gulf Coast cuisine around here, diasporas are gonna diaspora, melting pots are gonna melt, and Austin is now home to Austin’s Very Own Saltt, a family-owned casual joint inspired by Bruce’s but with a soul/New Orleans twist. In addition to the fried seafood, there are chicken wings, grits, waffles, and a broad variety of daiquiris for your more celebratory meals.
We made our first visit to Austin’s Very Own Saltt a few days before Thanksgiving and were not a little dismayed to find ourselves the only customers present. Granted, it was about an hour before closing during a holiday week, but it’s a little unsettling to dine at an empty seafood restaurant. Who knows, though? Maybe we’d missed a bumping dinner rush.
Saltt is a counter-service restaurant, with menus on television screens behind the counter and adhered to the counter itself. I mention this because the screens change, making it kind of hard to decide on an option when the menu you’re looking at changes before you’ve had a chance to take it in. This resulted in some mild confusion on our side when it came time to order, but nothing we, the lord’s toughest soldiers, couldn’t overcome.
I chose the salt and pepper catfish with french fries, and splurged on a green apple daiquiri. The kids both chose popcorn shrimp with fries, and my spouse went for the jumbo butterflied shrimp with salt and pepper fries. None of us should have been worried about the lack of diners in the joint, because I’m pretty sure we ate better than most people in the 78757 ZIP code that night. Both the popcorn and the butterflied shrimp were hot and fresh, perfectly breaded and succulent. My catfish tenders, an adjunct to the spicy, crispy Cantonese preparation found in your local Chinese restaurant, came wrapped in a thick, crunchy tempura breading and topped with a tangle of green onions, chiles, and pepper. The fish was piping hot and seemed fresh enough to have been wriggling in a net earlier that day. The salt and pepper fries came similarly topped, but weren’t breaded; they also seemed designed to let the protein be the star of the plate. I appreciated that the prices relative to the portion sizes were appropriate. (Note, however, that there is very little on the menu for vegetarians, unless a grilled cheese sandwich from the kids’ menu will suffice.)
My green apple daiquiri was tasty, but extremely sweet and not the right fit for a somewhat chilly November night. It would have been the perfect accompaniment for a stroll down Magazine Street in New Orleans while admiring the old homes and Audubon Park on a hot late-fall day.
We returned a few weeks later for Sunday brunch, lured by the siren call of grits and chicken & waffles. While the brunch entrees are a little more expensive, they offer a veritable raft of food. My chicken & waffles meal came with six salt and pepper wings and a Belgian-style waffle, two scrambled eggs, two slices of bacon, and a heaping helping of grits. I could easily have boxed up half of it to save for a hobbit-style luncheon or afternoon tea; I’m hard pressed at the moment to think of another restaurant meal in this town that costs less than $10 per serving. (Your mileage may vary.) While my fluffy eggs and crispy-but-not-too-crispy bacon were lukewarm when they came out, the chicken was hot and delicious. The grits were a little gummier than I prefer, but they were tasty nonetheless. The only item on the plate that didn’t quite work was the waffle, which tasted like it had been fermented too long or perhaps cooked with less-than-fresh oil or butter.
My spouse chose the fried catfish meal, another groaning spread with grits, eggs, bacon, and toast, and he raved about the freshness of the fish, along with his perfectly cooked over-medium eggs, a temperature he frequently requests when dining out but rarely receives. Needless to say, he was very satisfied with his selection. And because it was brunch, I ordered a mimosa, which was a steal at $2.99. I also ordered a slice of red velvet cheesecake to go; it was a serviceable dessert, but what I really appreciated was the care and effort reflected in how it had been packed up, garnished with generous dollops of whipped cream and crushed Oreos.
What struck us the most on both of our visits to Saltt was the friendly and welcoming staff. More than likely, when you visit Saltt, one of the owners will be the one taking your order, or bringing you your meal, making sure you have all the condiments you desire and are happy with your meal. The dining space is as neat as a pin, and the decor is a combination of homey touches and Austin iconography. While it’s nigh impossible to make a strip mall restaurant feel like someone’s dining room, the hospitality and attention to detail made us feel like we were honored guests. I can imagine bringing large groups here for birthday or graduation celebrations, or just for a sweet family dinner.
Austin’s Very Own Saltt
2525 W. Anderson #130
