FOOD & LIFE

A six-pack of Austin stores that make convenience a good thing

By Dina Guidubaldi
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

There's a big backlash against convenience these days, with people preferring to grow their own vegetables (not convenient), riding bikes instead of cars (sometimes convenient, depending on where and when), renting movies from local video stores as opposed to Netflix (definitely not convenient, but noble) and generally making things harder for themselves on purpose. You can call this liberalism or stubbornness, you can quote Thoreau or Emerson, you can ignore your car and your microwave for days, but don't forget this basic human fact: We like convenience. We invented it, and we constantly seek more of it.

Of course, sometimes I think I hate convenience, too. I think, "Hmm, we Americans have really become reliant on things being easy. We've really lost our way. We need to change." Then, spurred on by this thought, I go out to my garden, compost some soil, wait a few years to grow and harvest a batch of decent grapes, mash them with my feet, ferment them in barrels, pour the juice into bottles, wait another year and then drink it, fully satisfied with the fruits of my labor.

No, I don't. I go to the closest convenience store to wherever I am, buy a decent bottle of wine, maybe some chile-lime Fritos and a pack of gummy bears or two, and come home and put my un-wine-stained feet up. Here are six quick neighborhood places (as opposed to the many downtown places that are equally great, such as the Royal Blue Grocery) where you can do the same:

The Monarch

1402 E. 38 1/2 St. 478-4492. Hours: 7 a.m. to midnight Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturdays, 8 a.m. to midnight Sundays.

The Monarch is French Place's most diverse convenience store, and one of the East Side's best. The wine selection covers two full aisles and is priced well (your standard vinho verde, my cheap-wine-rule-of-thumb, is $7.99) and their beer selection is almost as good, from fancy single bottles to cases. If you ask them, they'll often stock your requests, like kombucha (a perfect drink for hangovers or sick days), fizzy Topo Chico and decent charcoal for all your French Place Sunday barbecues.

If you're feeling a little nostalgic for your teenage goth days, the Monarch's frightening selection of Djarum, Bali Hai, 555, Parliament, Nat Sherman and Dunhill cigarettes will transport you to the coffee shops and alleyways of yesteryear. They've got eggs, cream, and orange juice for your poorly-planned mornings. The owners seem genuinely happy to see you, no matter how late or early you come staggering in, and the place is friendly enough that you can leave your bike unlocked outside while you browse.

Live Oak Market

4410 Manchaca Road. 416-0300. Hours: 6 a.m. to midnight Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to midnight Saturdays, 8 a.m. to midnight Sundays.

Here's the thing about gummy bears: the only truly great bears are the classic Haribo kind. Not Trolli, with their flashy colors, not Black Forest (though their bears are shapelier). Only Haribo. And not only does the Live Oak Market carry Haribo gummy bears, but it has a whole rack full of Haribo candies — cherries, raspberries, peaches, letters and clownfish. So kudos to them for having impeccable gummy sense.

The Live Oak is situated at a particularly busy intersection on U.S. 290 and Manchaca Road, and if you blink it'll be gone. So don't blink, and stop in for either their homemade paninis, a kombucha drink (they carry not one but two brands) or Brazos Supreme goat's milk ice cream. The Live Oak gets more awesome points for playing Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" on the day I went in, with speakers that evidently went to 11.

Whip In

1950 S. Interstate 35. 442-5337, www.whipin.com. Hours: 8 a.m. to midnight daily.

The fact that the Whip In is the only convenience store in this column that has a Web site should say something. But actually, it's not a convenience store anymore, anyway. It's risen above every other convenience store on the planet, on little naan-bread wings, and is becoming a new sort of "thing" that only Austin could have. It serves an Obama Shandy (coconut water and Live Oak pilsner). It's got a hefty Belgian beer selection with all the flavors of the lambic rainbow. It's got prepackaged gourmet food for sale, including gnocchi and fancy chocolates and anything local they can get their hands on. It's got a tiny stage for musicians and the speakers blare be-bop when there's no one playing live. It's got a regular happy hour (3 to 7 p.m. daily) and a "Stewart/Colbert Nation Glorification" happy hour (10 to 11:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays), where you can sit and watch the shows with $1 off beer (16 kinds on tap!) and wines by the glass. It's dark (and everything should be dark), it's fun and even the workers seem glad to be there.

The Whip In serves an amazingly creative assortment of Texas/Indian food to go or to eat in, starting at $5.99. Try the Soloco, with roast beef, Gorgonzola and mushroom chutney ($7.99) or the Travis Heights veggie option with potatoes and chutney ($5.99). When possible, they make their food with local ingredients and apparently with a good deal of pride and love.

Bread Basket

2150 E. Seventh St. 480-9514. Hours: 6:30 or 7 a.m. to midnight daily.

Of the three East Side Bread Basket locations — Holly Street, Cesar Chavez Street and Seventh Street — the latter is the best. They've got spicy Mexican candies and all sorts of Twang salts. If you're feeling healthy, you can grab a bottle of Herbal Mist yerba mate , and if you're not, you can snag a pack of American Spirits for under $7, or a pint of Dreyer's "MAXX" ice cream. The Bread Basket counter crew makes jokes and laughs deep, no matter how long and surly the line is (and it's occasionally both, full of scratch-off players who aren't winning anything). They've got a wine alley, a row of random and rotating bottles (and Famega vinho verde for $6.99). Their sparkling Cristalino rosé wine sells for $8.99, and while it's not the best wine in the world, it's the perfect thing to pick up for a last-minute, mosquito-laden porch party.

On the beer front, Bread Basket has a large variety for a convenience store, from Budweiser Clamato Cheladas to Maredsous and Rogue four-packs to something called Schlitz High Gravity in a menacing can. It's got faraway beers like Brooklyn Lager and Leinenkugel's (which my Wisconsin friends call "laugh and giggles") and local beers like Fireman's No. 4 and the new Shiner Smokehaus (which, I should caution, loses its smokiness after one bottle).

Pronto Food Mart

4301 Duval St. 452-7974. Hours: 6 a.m. to midnight Sundays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturdays.

The Pronto is a neighborhood favorite, despite the fact that it's small and that the Hyde Park Market a little farther north on Duval has a much larger selection. What makes the Pronto a crowd pleaser is its generosity. From the boss, Hank Richardson, who provides his workers with health insurance, to the free air for bikers to the relatively cheap gas for drivers, the Pronto shows that it cares about its customers.

Stepping into the Pronto is a little like stepping back in time to the early '80s. They sell things I didn't think existed anymore, like Pearl and Tab and cheap hot dogs (two for less than $2, with free chili, cheese, onions and jalapeños). They've got handmade fresh sandwiches, frequent beer deals and workers who smile when you come in. It's the old Austin kind of place where people with feathered hair and jeans shorts might pull up and jump out of their truck beds for a case of beer to take to the lake. It's the sort of world the cutters from "Breaking Away" might inhabit. And I mean that like a good thing.

Lake Austin Chevron

2402 Lake Austin Blvd. 477-7477. Hours: 6 a.m. to midnight Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturdays, 7 a.m. to midnight Sundays.

In many science-fiction books and movies, there's a scene involving a way station — usually a white, sterile room where people are trying to get from Earth to space or home again. There's the impossibly long chair-spotted hallway of Space Station V in "2001: A Space Odyssey," the all-white room where Robert Duvall's character becomes trapped in "THX 1138" and countless other bright areas where cyborgs, humans and assorted sentient beings are kept waiting until they reach their next destination. The Lake Austin Chevron looks like one of those spaces, except instead of being a limbo-zone between here and the rest of the universe, it's just the first stop on the way to the lake.

One of the cleanest and coldest convenience stores you'll ever step flip-flop in, the Lake Austin Chevron pulsates with overhead lights and neon signs, except in the slightly darker and claustrophobic wine area — a little mazelike detour off to the side where they have a wide variety of reasonably priced and occasionally surprising bottles. They've got 12 packs of Fat Tire in cans for $15.99, perfect if you're headed out to Red Bud Isle Park for a swim against the dam's current or a romp with a tangle of wet dogs. As you're checking out, you can pick up something called "Happy Pills" at the counter, which pairs a little too conveniently with the sci-fi dazzle of the place.