Destinations

Austin City Limits Music Festival: beautiful weather, talented artists, loads of people….and great food.

Jennifer Roe

The Mighty Cone

Austin City Limits (ACL) is an annual 3-day music and art festival held in beautiful, Zilker Park in downtown Austin. Over 130 bands play on eight stages spread across the 46-acre park. Since 2002, music lovers have made their way to ACL, listening to well-known headliners and lesser-known bands that are just getting started. This year’s acts included Muse, The Strokes, Phish, Flaming Lips, Black Keys, and The Eagles. Weather can be an issue at ACL, where the average high temperature in late-September can reach 90+ degrees. But this year’s event, held October 8-10, was picture-perfect. This brought out plenty of people, 75,000 a day, almost all of whom eventually made their way to the ACL Food Court.

Unlike our Plaza Art Fair, all 30+ ACL food vendors are grouped in one area with festival-provided signage, making it easy for attendees to find what they’re looking for. The vendors have learned that keeping it delicious AND simple is the key. Having just a few menu items (vendors are required to provide 3-4 options) meant no customer spent too much time holding up the line trying to decide what to eat.  Each booth was also well-staffed…The Mighty Cone will bring as many as 30 people to man their booth the festival. ACL requires vendors in the 20’ x 20’ booth to have 6-8 points of sale, keeping wait times to a minimum. Food prices at ACL were also consistent, with most menu items in the $5-$8 range, another smart decision that kept the lines moving. 

There was plenty to recommend at this year’s festival: Lavaca St. Grill’s Hatch Green Chile Cheese Tots, Austin’s Best Burger’s Veggie Burger, and Torchy’s Tacos’ Potato, Bean, Cheese and Green Chile Taco were all terrific.  They reflect Austin’s food culture, which is a funky Tex-Mex inspired mélange of creative cuisine.

But nobody leaves ACL without chowing down at The Mighty Cone. From the geniuses at Hudson’s on the Bend, festival goers get an entire meal served in a paper drink cone. We opted for the Hot and Crunchy Chicken & Avocado cone, served with mango/avocado slaw drizzled with creamy ancho sauce.  Hudson’s has perfected the art of coated chicken; the delicious nutty, crisp coating keeps the chicken tender and is sturdy enough to withstand the sauce and slaw…it’s crispy down to the last bite. 

ACL is committed to keeping the festival as green as possible and I appreciated that food vendors were not allowed to have Styrofoam, plastic bags, plastic utensils, or individual condiment packets. All of our food was served in eco-friendly packaging and recycling containers were widespread.