This adventure begins at the Backyard when Charlie Jones, one of the principals in C3, was about to graduate from UT and was doing his internship at the Backyard with the owner, Tim O’Connor. He entered the scene about the time that I was in the process of exiting as I was selling my interest in the music scene back to Tim O’Connor so my recall is foggy. I do remember Charlie Jones saying that his hopeful end game was that he would someday be doing what Tim was doing at the Backyard.
I don’t have the details on how Charlie and Lance Armstrong met and developed their friendship, but Charlie had successfully begun his own path and was organizing events, celebrations, and concerts when Lance returned home to Austin following his Tour de France victories. Charlie’s first company was Capitol Sports & Entertainment (CSE) and he was managing sports figures and entertainers and the company was expanding at breakneck speed. The Lance Armstrong machine was generating a great deal of money both personally and philanthropically and naturally Charlie and Lance found each other.
My son Andrew was about to graduate from UT and was doing his internship with Tim O’Conner at the Backyard. I was wondering where Andrew would begin his career after his internship and for this reason among others, I stayed in communication with Charlie Jones. CSE was expanding and growing at a tremendously fast rate of speed and had begun to represent Lance who continued to win Tour de France victories, also at a tremendously fast rate of speed.
My attempts to get Charlie and Andrew together failed as Charlie was being honorable, CSE had already employed several of the Backyard employees and Charlie wanted to respect Tim. CSE expanded to the point that they developed a second company called C3 with a friend of Charlie’s, Charles Attal at the head of the new company and Andrew now had his in as Charles Attal did not owe any allegiance to Tim. It has probably been 15 years later and Andrew remains employed by C3 and still lovin’ his job. As C3 took off, CSE eventually disappeared.
Austin City Limits Music Festival (ACLMF) which is run by C3 has a life of its own. After the overwhelming response to their first festival, Charlie Jones called me to aid him in evolving the food vendors into a food court that was tasty and represented the Austin food scene. The first year of the festival was a musical phenomenon but a food vendor disaster as they were just not prepared for the huge turnout and the food lines were incredibly long and the vendors ran out of food every day very early in the day. The secret to C3’s success is that they always learn from their mistakes and each and every event that they do improves upon the last.
Charlie had several rules – no turkey legs or conventional festival foods like funnel cakes, he wanted the food to be modeled after the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival with an Austin twist. Charlie wanted no chain restaurants, he only wanted local vendors and restaurants that had the keep Austin weird and tasty feel.
My part in the festival was more than food vendor at ACLMF, I was the head hunter for the food court and I got the right vendors with well known and loved Austin food all in place. The Austin pride took its proper place in the food court and there is a great deal of pride when you represent Austin; weird and wonder-filled was seen in the food at the food court. Eight stages with 180 shows didn’t hurt the success of ACLMF either.
What should Hudson’s serve at a festival? Our Hot & Crunchy Trout was our most requested item at the restaurant and the breading could go on anything. Through the years, we had breaded everything from fish, shrimp, avocado🥑, snails; damn near everything tasted better if it was breaded in hot and crunchy and then fried. C3 was skeptical when I announced we were going to serve Hot and Crunchy chicken cones but it became a wild hit. You could hold your cone in one hand and your beverage in the other hand making it perfect festival food and it kept the food “Austin weird”. It also helped that it could be mass produced and handed to the customer with absolutely no wait and on top of that it was ever so tasty.
We put a flour tortilla in an oversized paper cone and then we blended tubs of shredded cabbage with our Mango Jalapeño Sauce that was placed in the flour tortilla and then the Hot & Crunchy Chicken Tender was placed on top of the Mango Jalapeno Slaw and then topped with ancho aioli sauce. In one little cone and in every bite, you got every possible flavor; spicy, sweet, crunchy, tender. We got lots of media attention, nationwide press came from Bon Appetite Magazine who declared it was the tastiest new dish and it was featured in the Culinary Institute of America’s (CIA) text book accompanied with pictures. Locally it was featured in the Food and Entertainment Section of the Austin American Statesman as the best festival food.
We had lots of notables come to our booth for a taste, Mathew McConaughey came to the front counter to get a cone, Ben Harper came in through the kitchen to get his. Ray Benson (Asleep at the Wheel), who I’ve known for more years than I want to admit, all 6’7” of him snuck up from behind and gave me a bear hug, getting all cozy with me in hopes of getting easy access out of the park as we vendors had up close parking in the early days. Little did he know that he was hugging me and the $60,000 cash in my backpack. I had asked the cooks to guard me so they all jumped to as he grabbed me, but I quickly told them that Ray was a friend just looking for a ride to his car.
I had lots of media attention for both the restaurant and the food booth at the festival and I was riding high with the image of a successful chef/owner so it was easy to convince other high-end restaurants to join the festival. It didn’t hurt that the mighty cone was wildly successful and that the festival had a strong public relations department.
Becoming a vendor at ACLMF is to set up a fast paced highly functional mobile restaurant and as in a brick and mortar restaurant we had a front of house (FOH) and a back of house (BOH) and we had two people setting up the front and back respectively. Abel Garcia set up the back which included the pre-breading, setting up the deep fryers, refrigerators, transfer of all equipment from Hudson’s to Zilker Park, and staffing the cooks. Being a consummate list maker and planner, I gave Abel lists of equipment and utensils that were needed and happily they all appeared along with Abel’s own thoughts which were also needed. He was such an important gear in our machine, to put it mildly.
Sara Courington (now Sara Blank) as usual was the glue between the front and the back. I was always amazed how she was able to juggle the staff and was able to successfully let each employee go to the show of their dreams and still keep the booth fully staffed. It was never written down, but it always worked. Her ability to keep a fun attitude kept everything and everybody running smoothly on those really long stressful days. One of our claims to fame at the food court was that we had the fastest moving customer lines and this was largely due to Sara’s skillful coordination of the front and back of the house and also her ability to put out fires before they became a problem was a large part of our success.
Austin City Limits Music Festival gave birth to our trailer the “Mighty Cone” which was a successful off shoot. I never thought festival food would introduce us to a different market or that it would complement Hudson’s but it did indeed and I will blog more about that later.
It seems only natural that the recipe below be the “Hot & Crunchy Chicken Cone”. Remember you can also do shrimp, avocado or the popular combination of chicken and avocado together in a cone. I remember one festival goer proudly announcing that this was his 9th cone of the day. Yikes!
I’ll give 3 recipes that make up the cones. The Hot & Crunchy Breading. The Mango Jalapeño Sauce. The Ancho Aioli Sauce. They can be made days in advance so all you have to do is assemble and serve hot. Put your spin on it. One year we did the Monster Cone — shrimp, avocado & chicken on the same cone! You can also make Hudson’s famous trout dish with all of the following recipes.
Mango Jalapeño Sauce
Ingredients
1 pound of mango, ¼” dice
1&1/2 cups sugar, organic cane
3 ounces rice wine vinegar
3 tablespoons minced garlic
4 tablespoons minced red onion
3 tablespoons minced jalapeño
1 tablespoon sea salt
Method
Combine mangos, sugar, garlic, onion, vinegar and salt to sauce pan and bring to a simmer for 10 minutes.
Add jalapeño and cool.
Mango Jalapeno Slaw
Ingredients
2 limes, juiced
2 bunches of cilantro, chopped
3 cups mango jalapeno sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
4 cups sliced cabbage
Method
In a large bowl mix the cabbage with the lime juice, cilantro, cooled mango jalapeño sauce and mayo.
Toss.
Spicy Ancho Sauce
Ingredients
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup ancho purée, (5 ancho peppers roasted, seeded & puréed smooth with chicken stock).
2 tablespoons of minced garlic
2 tablespoons of minced jalapeño
¼ cup of minced red onion
3 tablespoons of lime juice
3 tablespoons honey
Method
Place all ingredients in the blender and purée until smooth.
Store in squirt bottles
Hot & Crunchy Breading
Ingredients
¼ cup slivered almonds
¼ cup sesame seeds
2 cups corn flakes
¼ cup cane sugar
1& ½ tablespoons red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon sea salt
Method
Combine sesame seeds and almonds on a cookie sheet. Roast until light brown in 400-degree oven about 8 minutes.
Cool.
Combine all ingredients with the S blade in a food processor and pulse to incorporate.
Don’t over process, it should be course.
Assembly
Set up a standard breading station; flour, egg wash and hot & crunchy breading.
Dust the chicken tender in the flour, pass it through the egg wash and then into the breading. Using the heel of your hand press the breading into the tender.
Then deep fry in non-trans fat oil (8 minutes).
Set aside.
Place the warm flour tortilla in a paper drink cone.
Put mango jalapeño slaw in the tortilla in a linear spread.
Place the cooked and breaded chicken tender atop the cole slaw.
Squeeze a squiggly attractive line of the ancho sauce on top of the tender.
Use anything. Shrimp, avocado or any combination.
ENJOY