Is Ceviche Love the best seafood restaurant in Austin?
You can make that case.
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Austin has TWO frontiers of exciting new restaurants.
The one covered in the Austin Chronicle is the new East Side.
The one the Austin Chronicle ignores is FM 812 under the airport heading towards Del Valle.
FM 812 is a collection of food trucks morphing into brick and mortar on the stretch under the airport between 183 and the Bastrop County Border.
Food trucks morph into brick and mortar restaurants the way that trailer homes morph into real houses.
The owners carefully save their pennies and as financial circumstances permit, they gradually add improvements. They add a garden. They add covered areas. They put more solid facilities in the trailer itself. Every month or every few months they upgrade a component.
Then one day, they can look at what they have accomplished.
They no longer have a tin can on wheels.
They have a lasting durable residence they can call their own.
FM 812 has about twenty five or thirty Mexican or Central American entrepreneurs who are doing this with their food trucks - turning them into real restaurants.
Some of these kitchens are producing amazing food.
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Ceviche Love is one of the stars of this new movement.
It is in an improvised food court with three other food trucks.
All of the food trucks get business.
(The smells coming out of Ceviche Love's pollo asado neighbor are utterly fantastic.)
But Ceviche Love is the star of the show, with people pouring into the restaurant nonstop throughout the afternoon.
Its star status is well deserved. This is a great great great seafood truck.
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Cold fish dishes are what the truck is known for.
But the hot fish dishes command serious respect as well.
They do ceviches, cocteles, botanas, aguachiles, cold seafood tostadas, cechichies, and their own custom seasoned raw oysters.
They offer many variations within those categories.
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I had the shrimp coctele and sampled a green aguachile.
The shrimp coctele was simply the best version I have ever had of any kind of shrimp cocktail.
This includes both the Yankee version with chili sauce and horseradish and the Mexican version with tomatoes and chiles.
I was madly and totally in love.
The green aguachile was perfectly wonderful but nothing could compare with my shrimp coctele.
***
On a day of ordering way too much food,
I also did the fried mojarra while my carnivorous partner in crime did the fried tilapia.
The fried tilapia eater was ecstatic.
IMHO, the tilapia was a nice version of your basic fried fish.
(I would order it happily).
The mojarra was really really interesting eating.
It was grilled rather than fried.
This is a whole flat fish (a small one). It is one of the tinier dishes on the menu.
Grooves are cut into the fish, the way Southeast Asians cut grooves into fried fish
You eat oblong slices of grilled fish right off the bone doing both sides.
The house provides chili oil to put on the fish.
You can find a vast library of hot sauces at the ordering window - using a wide variety of peppers and packing a wide variety of heat.
I recommend picking one of the bottled sauces over the chili oil default option.
With a good Mexican hot sauce on the mojarra, this is fine fine eating.
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In the department of physical plant improvements, there are two that are worthy of note.
Ceviche Love has purchased a small house trailer and converted it into a cantina.
They only have a beer license for now but they heavily promote their micheladas.
I had to work that day, so I couldn't drink.
But just about everyone else around us was having micheladas - with the occasional traditionalist holding out for plain beer.
I suspect the micheladas are pretty good.
They also have turned their eating area into a covered garden.
You sit in the shade underneath nice lattice work.
The traffic on 812 could be a million miles away.
It is a nice place to wile away an afternoon,
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The one improvement the restaurant could use is an upgrade on the bathroom facilities.
The four restaurants share three porta-potties in the back.
All indications are that the porta-potty company is not doing the maintenance that you are supposed to get when you sign one of those rental deals.
The owners may have an issue with the porta-potty company ... but I hope they just can find a nicer set of arrangements.
If nature is distracting you, there is a gas station across the street - and a major supermarket behind the gas station.
I recommend you use one of the more established facilities.
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But you didn't drive down to 812 to find a world class bathroom.
You drove down for amazing fish.
This is really really amazing fish.
Ceviche Love gets an absolutely top endorsement.
A completely first rate establishment. read more