Salt Lick owner opens comfort food restaurant Roxie's in Buda. What to expect
Roxie's specializes in the fried chicken and chicken fried steak of owner Scott Roberts' grandmother, Roxanne Roberts. (PROVIDED BY GARRETT SMITH)
Scott Roberts drove to the old stone house near the intersection of FM 1826 and FM 969 last year, where his grandmother Roxanne Roberts once lived, and pleaded with her memory:
"How in the heck did you do it?" Roberts asked.
He might have used some saltier language of which Roxie would not have approved. The owner of Salt Lick was at his wit's end. He'd spent more than three months working with his culinary team to reverse engineer his grandmother's famous chicken fried steak for his new restaurant, Roxie's, in Buda.
A few weeks later, after Roberts and his executive chef decided to use crumbled biscuits for the breading that gives the chicken fried sirloin a nobby cragginess, the owner of the iconic Driftwood barbecue restaurant knew he'd found one of the centerpieces for Roxie's.
"Roxie didn't write down recipes, so every time I get it and figure it out and get it back the way she did it, you get goose pimples," Roberts said recently from a round wooden table near a soaring wall of windows at the restaurant located in the historic Buda Mill & Grain building, a biscuit roll from a set of active train tracks.
Roxie's is located in the historic Buda Mill & Grain at 308 Main St. (PROVIDED BY GARRETT SMITH)
That table, like the chicken fried steak, is meant to evoke the memory of Roxie's old home at the restaurant that opened last week, specializing in chicken fried steak, fried chicken, homestyle sides, burgers, deviled eggs and more.
"People call it comfort food, but I think it's more remembrance," Roberts said.
Roxie Roberts used to host Sunday suppers at her house in Driftwood following church services, and the round wooden table in her dining room, replicated now at her namesake restaurant, was the prized seat in the house.
"It took me about nine years to work up to it," Roberts said.
The owner of one of the country's most iconic barbecue restaurants had let the idea of opening a restaurant in his grandmother's honor percolate for about 25 years, waiting for the right time and place to make itself obvious.
Deviled eggs topped with bacon are stars of the appetizer selection at Roxie's in Buda. (EFREN SALINAS/AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
After stumbling upon the old Mill & Grain building in the town where he went to elementary school, he knew he'd found the right location. But that was just the beginning. Besides completely renovating the dining room of the building - giving the space that once housed Valentina's Tex-Mex BBQ a warm country feel, complete with hand-stitched pillows, wood cane chairs and a portico over the kitchen that resembles Roxie's home - Roberts and his team spent more than half a year dialing in the menu.
To approximate the flavor of Roxie's kitchen and bring her food hospitality back to life was an honor, but the task also came with no small amount of pressure.
The food that brings it back
The result is golden fried chicken with crackling skin, chicken fried steak that leans on pepper, onion, garlic and the umami of pulverized chicken bouillon; biscuits that billow just to the point of snapping in the middle; deviled eggs topped with pig candy made with pork from the Salt Lick; green beans stewed with onions and bacon; sage-packed sausage sliders brushed with bacon-blackberry jam and more.
Roxie's was designed to emulate the look and feel - at a much greater scale - of dining at Roxanne Roberts' old home in Driftwood. (PROVIDED BY GARRETT SMITH)
The menu's foundational element is The Experience, which allows diners to order half a fried chicken, chicken fried steak, baked chicken or tenders for white-meat lovers, as the focal point of a meal surrounded by homestyle side dishes of beans, whipped mashed potatoes and sweet creamed corn. Desserts include apple, key lime and cherry sour cream pies, along with peach pound cake topped with vanilla ice cream.
Roberts hopes the new restaurant, which is open for lunch and dinner and features a full bar specializing in classic Southern cocktails and bellinis, will give guests a taste of the flavors and comfort he's held dear for decades.
"I'm extremely excited. The greatest memories I have of growing up were going over to Roxie's house to eat on Sundays. I wanted to recreate that. I wanted to share it," Roberts said.
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