Events
Fox and Hound Smokehouse & Tavern By Moira Muldoon Special to the American-Statesman Thursday, August 15, 2002 
Generally speaking, I don't "review" bars. After all, it's not like I have a rating system ("Five gin and tonics for Lovejoy's!"). My own biases certainly show up ("Dive bars hurrah!"), but my hope -- and intent -- is to give you, the reader, a good enough sense of the place that you can decide for yourself if it's the kind of bar you'd like to go to.
That said, I gotta tell you: the Fox and Hound, the new pub occupying the Waterloo Brewing Co.'s old space on Guadalupe, is awful. Horrible. I'd rather give up this column than be forced to go back there. First, though, the nice things I can say about the Fox and Hound: The young staff is friendly. Service has been exceptionally prompt each time I've been there. The beer list is very good. The bar provides many Austinites with jobs. If you are interested in watching a sporting event, you won't miss a single moment of the action, because no matter where you sit you can see at least two very large video monitors. But, c'mon, there are televisions in the bathroom -- does anyone really need to see a Macy Gray video that badly? Noise engulfs you; the F and H is a huge, high-ceilinged, two-story bar, and in addition to the rows and rows of big screen TVs, the music is painfully loud. Our waitress couldn't hear our order. My friend and I had to lean so close together our foreheads practically touched in order to have any semblance of conversation. It was too dark to read the menu. They ran out of french fries at 8:30 on a Wednesday night. And vinaigrette. The Fox and Hound, part of a large national chain, has 12 locations in Texas alone. Before this visit I'd never been to any of them (I hear the one in College Station is one of the few "cool" places to drink), but the Austin version is utterly soulless. I know it's a cliché to call a chain bar soulless, but the hulking pub on Guadalupe could just as easily sit alongside a convention center in Dallas or L.A. or Atlanta. It feels like a souped-up Bennigan's, the kind of place you might visit on a business trip because it was next door to your hotel and you were too tired to search out a local watering hole. Without doubt, such places serve a purpose, but given how many truly distinctive places populate Austin, I just can't see wasting another evening at the Fox and Hound. (Unless they were showing a big game. Not that I really watch big games, but I could understand how someone might find a TV in the bathroom appealing in said situation.) Don't get me wrong: This is not a tirade about the evils of corporate giants and chain bars. Heaven knows, the Gingerman, just next door to the F and H, is not an Austin original -- the first one was in Houston -- and I like the Gingerman just fine. And, I should add, I was never a die-hard Waterloo fan, so I didn't walk into the F and H prepared to hate it. People who loved Waterloo, however, are going to miss the big burgers, the ability to just walk in and plonk down any old place (there are greeters now who'll show you to a table), and the ubiquitous sense of Austin-ness. No, I'm not mad that the F and H isn't Waterloo, I'm not lambasting it simply because it's part of a chain. All I'm saying is, on a Wednesday night, after a long day, I went to meet a good friend for a drink and some dinner. And I wasn't 10 yards into the bar before the cacophony, the sheer volume of blue-green TV images and the overt and relentless impersonality of the entire setup made me wish I could turn on my heel and run. Contact Moira Muldoon at bargirl@covad.net | ||||
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