Valhalla - Austin TX

After years of being a scuzzy rock band person, you gain the innate ability to find the "off the beaten path" places. The cooler dives and joints that locals frequent and tourists know nothing about.  Valhalla is one of those places, even though it's smack dab in the middle of downtown Austin.  As luck would have it, Valhalla had just started serving food.  Lucky me!

The layout of this joint is ridiculous.  The whole front room is bisected by a round kinda tiki bar looking thing.  To get from one side to the other you have to go all the way around back through a scary tunnel.  More on that later.

Pinball machines and video games.  Nice.

Lots of cool mafia style tables.

And albums on the walls.

YES!

I asked the bartender (the only person working in the whole place) for some fries.  This is what he told me:
BARTENDER:  Okay, cool.  What you need to do is go down the back hallway around to the other side, find the staircase that curves up to the left, go to the top of the stairs and look for a small service window in the loft.  Tell the dude at the window I sent you.

WHA?  So I went down the scary tunnel....

Up the staircase....

Found the window....

And told the dude I wanted some fries.  There were actually two dudes on the kitchen, and they both looked pretty stoned.  I handed them my money.  He asked my name.  I told him Gibby.   Totally felt like a drug deal.

Back at the table, the ketchup provided did not instill confidence.

About 10 minutes later, a booming voice came over the sound system:
ORDER READY FOR GIBBY!  ORDER READY FOR GIBBY!

At no time was I told that I would need to return back to the scary window to retrieve my fries.  Crazy!  Anyhoo, these are the fries.

And they were......really good!

Crisp, hot, tasty.  I'll tell you what, some stoner metal guys know fries, yo!

Even with all the ordering/pick up weirdness the fries are totally worth it at Valhalla.  DO IT.

P.S.  Jack at most of them on accounta he said that was the only way to "get into Valhalla".