Elevensies in Austin

If you hadn’t noticed Matt and I have a very healthy geeky side. We are in touch with our inner geek and aren’t ashamed.  When Matt’s friend L posted a link to the Alamo Draft House’s Hobbit Feast in Austin there wasn’t hesitation. We were in.

Here is the event in a nutshell- Alamo Draft House is a movie theatre that serves food and beer.  Good food and beer.  They also do themed movie viewings and a couple of years ago they created the ultimate movie event for geeks like us- Hobbit Feast.  View all three Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movies in their extended director’s cut formats while dining on Hobbit inspired food and drink- get this- for all seven courses of Hobbit meals-

First Breakfast
Fresh Hens eggs, nice crispy bacon, grilled mushrooms and orange slice Canella Blood Orange Mimosa

Second Breakfast
Strawberries and Cream Fleurasion Oberhoff Mead

Elevensies
Pan seared sausage and tomatoes with cheeses, cabbage and pickles Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale

Luncheon
Grilled lamb chops, cabernet reduction with mashed potatoes, roast baby carrots and a brown ale Guinness Stout

Afternoon Tea
Tea Baby greens with garlic blackberry vinaigrette, salted pork-cheese galette, tea cookies served with hot tea

Dinner
Stewed Coney with taters, carrot, and leek, fresh garden herbs with crusty bread Woodchuck Amber Cider

Supper
Swirl of tomato and spinach soups wild mushroom crouton, apple pie NV Charles Bove Sparkling Brut

Lembas bread as needed

*Cue choirs*

In January Matt and I sat down and looked at our vacation for the year and did some strategizing. When you have family spread all over the country (Indiana- him, Colorado, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts-Me) vacation is a precious commodity that must be rationed.  We knew that in addition to trips to the East Coast and Indiana we wanted to visit his friends L & N who recently moved to Austin.  We were certain Austin would be our kind of town.  Hobbit Feast provided us the perfect opportunity to visit L & N and check out all that Austin had to offer.

Now wanting to go to Hobbit Feast and actually getting to go are two different things.  The tickets are limited and hot commodities. It’s all very mysterious. They don’t actually announce when the tickets will go on sale- they just do.  And apparently they release tickets in waves so you have to be fast.  L was on it though. She supper stalked the website and one night Matt got a text late at night “They are on sale”  He logged in and tried to purchase 2 but they only let him buy one. He woke me up and told me to buy 1 but it was closed.  L had snagged 2 so we were 1 ticket shy.  Cue stress.  The next day L worked her networking magic and had the fourth ticket for us.  Hence our excitement in these photos.

It was amazing. 12 hours of Hobbits!  Next year when they add The Hobbit to the mix it will stretch 16+ hours- Whoa.  I would totally do it again though- the food (especially the Lembas was ahhh-mazing).

The rest of our trip was pretty awesome too.  We had a blast eating our way through Austin. Fried avocado (pictured below) is the most amazing thing ever.

I can think of no better place for a post-drinking dessert than Gourdoughs- YUM.

We even fit in brunch with some of my favorite Bees. Austin is most definitely on my cities I can live in list.  We can’t wait to come back.

And just to cap off our wondrously geeky weekend, we attended the Seattle Symphony’s Legend of Zelda night on our return. Ironically we found ourselves sitting next to our friends T and D (of murder mystery night fame)- awesome.

*sigh*  Does 12 hours of LOTR sound like heaven or hell to you? Who else is counting down the months until The Hobbit (my fav book BTW) releases?