Hi..

Anyone else in Austin TX?

Here are some low carb resources for Austin.

Stores:
The Carb Free Shop
8440 Burnett Rd.
http://www.carbfreeshop.com
Good selection, home made LC ice cream, fresh wraps.

Great Health Nutrition
4815 W. Braker Lane
Haven't gone yet, but have heard many good things about them.

HEB at Tech Ridge
they have an ever-expanding stock of LC items. Every time I go, they have more products. Low carb frozen dinners, yogurt, milk, sauce, dressing, etc.. Their organic section has Guar Gum (basically same as Thicken Thin/Not starch), soy flower, that 1 gram per serving soy milk, protein powder, Oil of Oregano, and more.

One great thing about all HEB stores is that they carry their own generic brand of LC Shakes (called "Today's Balance). The ingredients and nutritional data are identical to the Atkins shakes, but they're only $4.50 for a 4-pack. Also, they currently have stacks of in-store coupons sitting around for $1 off a 4-pack of Today's Balance, with no limit on how many are purchased. I stocked up Maybe I should post that to a more general section of the forum.

Restaurants:

TGIFridays
This national chain has an Atkins approved menu.

Chili's
This national chain has a LC menu.

El Arroyo
Several locations. Mexican food. They have a HUGE LC menu, and list very detailed carb gram info (to 2 significant digits! i.e., 1.3 grams).
http://www.ditch.com/index.html

Baby Greens
drive-thru on corner of S. 1st and Oltorf
I haven't gone, but I read elsewhere that they have LC options -- like lettuce wrap sandwiches.

Low Carb Austin Live Journal
Personally, I don't like livejournal; it's a pain to join if you're only going to use it for one group. YMMV. But, it's a good resource.
http://www.livejournal.com/community/austin_lowcarb/

That's all I have for now. I hope ppl find this helpful.

-e.

From Yahoo News:

Austin's Pizza First to Deliver Low-Carb Pizza to the Austin Area

Wednesday March 10, 8:15 am ET
Hometown Eatery Becomes the Healthy Choice for Those on Low-Carb Diets

AUSTIN, Texas, March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Austin's Pizza, the community's largest hometown pizza company, today announced that it has begun delivering low-carb pizza to the Austin and Round Rock areas. Austin's Pizza is the first pizza restaurant to offer a healthy alternative for those people on low-carbohydrate diets who have given up bread and other high-carb foods.

More:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040310/nyw058_1.html

I finally stopped by:
Great Health Nutrition
4815 W. Braker #530
345-7897
Austin 78759
Hours: Mon-Fri 10-8 Sat 10-6 Sun 12-6

The store is great and carries practically every low-carb product that you could order online, at the same or lower prices.

The clerk there, who I assume is the owner, said that she had been out of the country for a couple months, and that the store is not doing so well. She was really friendly and helpful, and gave us TONS of free samples. She asked me to tell all my friends about the store, I assume to increase business. Unfortunately, I don't have any low-carbing friends here, so I figured I'd try to tell any Austin low-carbers that I could find.

-e.

Hi there! I just joined this forum and glad to see someone in the area, well I'm north of you up in Round Rock but heck as fast as it's growing around here it will soon be considered Austin anyway! Thanks for sharing the info and I get into Austin about once a month so I'll have to go check out these places. I saw Baby Greens on the news a few weeks back and boy did it look good!

Wow!

I just found answers to all my questions before I even asked them.
We're planning to relocate to Austin from Europe. We just started the process. Still in a planning stage, though.
I'm so happy to see that Austin is so much LC-friedly.
I started LC-ing in spring 2005, took a break for pregnancy and nursing, and I'm back since yesterday.

Anyway, I'd welcome any information and advice.

We have 2 boys - 3 y.o. and 6 mo., and are looking for a house in some family friendly neighborhood. So far we've been directed to Round Rock. Brushy Creek seems really nice. We're looking at Avery Ranch, too.

We're giving ourselves a lot of time to prepare for that big move. Probably a year.

The CarbFree Shop on Burnet is long gone.

Great Health is still there -- they have quite a few low-carb items, as well as a large selection of bodybuilder supplements / protein powders. I picked up a couple of bottles of DaVinci syrups yesterday. Here's their Web site.

I haven't been in the Tech Ridge HEB for over a year, but I suspect their selection of low-carb products is considerably reduced from when epb9 wrote the above back in 2004. HEB's Central Market had a pretty good selection of low-carb products in a separate section in 2004, but that's long gone too.

However, the HEB in the same shopping center as Great Health Nutrition has a full-service butcher counter with aged Prime and grass-fed steaks, natural pork, and a large selection of seafood. That shopping center is about 1/4 mile away from Costco and less than 1/2 mile away from Sam's Club, so that stretch of North U.S. 183 is a good place to do a lot of low-carb shopping.

Also, the HEB at Hancock Center (in Austin proper) also has a full-service butcher counter, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Tech Ridge HEB has one too. Are the coals ready yet? Then bring out the steaks!

El Arroyo's low-carb menu seems to be one with the snows of yesteryear, if their Web site is any indication.

Baby Greens still seems to be going strong with their lettuce wraps, if their Web site is any indication.

Other restaurants --
Texas BBQ is usually beef, with a tomato-based sauce that you can get on the side. Most places also barbecue chicken and sausage, and a few do pork. The sauce is the problem, though -- often made out of ketchup and/or with enough added sugar to kick one out of ketosis.

Speaking of barbecue -- there are a couple of Mongolian Barbecue places, where you pick out a selection of vegetables (including cabbage, broccoli, and other low-carb friendly choices) and meats, add condiments such as soy sauce, vinegar, hot sauce, etc, and turn it over to a grillman who cooks it for you. It's one eatery where neither a low-carber nor a vegetarian needs to feel like a freak, and a good place to go when the office crowd wants to get lunch together.

Taco Cabana is a local (Austin and San Antonio) chain of fast-food Tex-Mex places. They have rotisserie ("flameante") chicken that makes a good lunch alternative to getting a fast food burger and throwing away the bun.