Ceviche, sushi and Szechuan: What to eat at Austin restaurants to beat this heat

Matthew Odam, Austin American-Statesman
Updated ·6 min read

Gonna let y'all in on a little secret: It's hot out. Yep. Really, really, really hot. Like, hottest-July-in-recorded-history hot.

But, unless you’re on a juice cleanse (pretty good time of year to look into one, I reckon), or fasting altogether, you're probably still eating. In this infernal heat, like many people, I turn to eating a lot of fresh fruit at home, along with lightly cooked fish dishes, salads and anything I can splash with vinegar or citrus.

I also still eat out regularly (it's kinda my thing), and when I'm not focused on writing about a specific restaurant, I try to eat like I do at home – light. The good news is that restaurant folks prepare food better than I do. Here are a few of my recent staples helping me through this insufferable heat.

Raw and cured fish

Put some crunch in your ceviche at Ma'Coco in East Austin.
Put some crunch in your ceviche at Ma'Coco in East Austin.

My main go-to food in this heat. And we've got some great options. The acid-zipped ceviche at Mexican seafood restaurant Este is like a culinary cold plunge.

The ceviche at  Ma’Coco in East Austin carries a gentle serrano sting, with pickled onions adding to the vibrant flavors of the mixture centered on a fan of broad totopos. The raw bar at Mongers Market + Kitchen in Hyde Park always offers a nice and refreshing surprise with their rotating crudo that I order to complement the sweet meat of crab fingers. If you're not into the whole sit-down restaurant thing, head over to brothers Luis and Esteban Alcaraz's El Marisquero seafood trailer. The bright flavors from their ceviche belie the trailer’s location tucked behind the Shell gas station on the Interstate 35 feeder road just north of Lady Bird Lake.

Sushi

The hand rolls at Uroko are a great answer for a light lunch.
The hand rolls at Uroko are a great answer for a light lunch.

You’re gonna have to pay a price to cool off and lighten up with sushi, but it just might be worth it. And, no, I’m not going to tell you about “cheap” or even “affordable” good sushi because that’s something of an oxymoron. If you’re trying to mitigate the hit on your wallet, buy some sushi-grade fish at the market and make it at home. My two favorite sushi restaurants are crazy hard to get into (Tsuke Edomae) and/or quite pricey (Otoko). But you can’t go wrong with the cold preparations at the OG, Uchi or Uchiko, and the relatively speedy omakase at Uroko is a solid value for quality fish, as are the lunch specials at Kome on Airport Boulevard.

Oysters

Uptown Sports Club in East Austin will give you a taste of New Orleans and casts its nets beyond for fresh oysters.
Uptown Sports Club in East Austin will give you a taste of New Orleans and casts its nets beyond for fresh oysters.

My favorite spots for oysters of late and of always: the bar at Perla's, where I wanna grab a cold bottle of Muscadet; the intimate and new Bill's Oyster downtown, where you can add a side of Astros day game with your East Coast oyster platter; and Uptown Sports Club, where my meal might start light with oysters but eventually the roast beef or fried shrimp po' boy always prove too hard to resist. And, if my friends insist on those big elephant ears from the Gulf of Mexico, I'm headed to Deckhand Oyster Bar.

Poke

Poke Poke is a great way to get your fish fix.
Poke Poke is a great way to get your fish fix.

The surfer's sashimi is how Poke Poke bills its raw tuna and salmon preparations. I don't surf, so these meals are about as close as I come to feeling like I just finished carving some sweet waves. The added chili flake, rice vinegar, sesame oil and shoyu in the Aloha version add sting, snap and savory layers, and the recent option to make half of your bowl's base pickled cucumber is an acidic alteration I can really get behind.

Whither you precious breakfast tacos?

Australian import Proud Mary knows its way around that country's beloved avocado toast.
Australian import Proud Mary knows its way around that country's beloved avocado toast.

The mercury may not press into the 90s until after breakfast, but I’m not trying to overload myself in mornings like these. My most regular summer breakfast choice is a Bam Bam smoothie from JuiceLand, with the pineapple juice and blended-in frozen mango throwing some tropical sunshine on my day and waking up my palate, and the hemp protein, spirulina and coconut oil giving me added fuel.

If I’m sitting down to eat solid foods early in the heat these days, I want an alternative to my somewhat-regular migas order. A recent favorite that fits the bill is a luxe avocado toast from Proud Mary. The import from Australia, arguably the home of the avocado toast craze, takes a craft approach, marinating the fatty fruit with passion fruit vinaigrette and layering the toast with razor-thin heirloom tomatoes and dots of tamari-and-miso-marinated sunburst cherry tomatoes packed with umami. And you can add a poached egg to the herb-brightened dish if you really miss your breakfast taco.

Cold noodles

If there's ice in the bowl, you know the dish is cold, like the buckwheat noodles with gochujang at Narrow Street 512.
If there's ice in the bowl, you know the dish is cold, like the buckwheat noodles with gochujang at Narrow Street 512.

Not all noodle dishes arrive steaming hot. Tucked into the back of the food court at H-Mart, Narrow Street 512 is one of the city’s best Korean dining options and they serve several cold noodle soups that come with a small raft of ice in the bowl keeping things chill. You can order the buckwheat noodle dish in a clear broth or spiked with gojuchang and kimchi.

Lean into the heat

Just because it's hot doesn't mean you have to be scared of hot dishes. Lean in.
Just because it's hot doesn't mean you have to be scared of hot dishes. Lean in.

Some people like to double down on the heat. It’s 100 degrees outside? Cool, let’s get into it. That’s not really my speed, but if I am going to flirt with culinary heat in this weather, I want it to be the floral and numbing heat that Szechuan cuisine offers. I visit House of Three Gorges for its sizzling cumin lamb, breathy with the perfumed purple pepper, and China Family, where I might get Szechuan dishes grilled (pork belly), fried (shrimp) or in a soup (fish).

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin cold dishes: What to eat in Austin to beat this heat