Texas Haute Country

THE Hill Country, a swath of about 15 rural counties just west of Austin and San Antonio, has three things most of the rest of Texas doesn't: trees, water and hills. That translates reliably into autumn color. But while a fall trip through the maples and red oaks and mountain cedar looks much the same as it did 10 years ago, another element is changing. The food of the Hill Country has matured to the point that you can have a barbecue sandwich for lunch and pan-seared scallops with chipotle lime hollandaise for dinner.

Skip to next paragraph Texas Travel GuideGo to the Texas Travel Guide » Enlarge This Image Mark Graham for The New York Times

You can order the breakfast that won the West in the John Wayne Room at the OST in Bandera.

Multimedia Slide Show Rural Texas for Foodies Map Hill Country, Texas if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();

Driving into the Hill Country from Dallas, my wife, Ann, and I usually make our way down Route 281, the region's twisty, dipping and rising north-south spine that's known locally as U.S. Highway 281, to Marble Falls, northwest of Austin. The town's location and increasing popularity have spawned gated retirement communities; B & Bs and chain motels; and the Horseshoe Bay Marriott, a resort nearby with three golf courses and hard-surface and clay tennis courts. Perched on limestone bluffs, Marble Falls is postcard pretty, with its quaintly restored downtown and vistas of Lake L.B.J. and the Colorado River.

Tradition rules at the Blue Bonnet Cafe, which has a pie happy hour (a slab of pie with coffee for ). I generally go for the peanut butter, not only because of its dizzyingly rich taste, but because any eating tour of the Hill Country must accept - no, embrace - the righteous custom of eating foods your cardiologist would frown on.

After the Blue Bonnet, eating becomes more complicated because Marble Falls has grown into something of an unlikely foodie scene. Patton's on Main shows the cosmopolitan flair that its owner, a local fellow named Patton Robertson, picked up during years of learning and cooking in London and Las Vegas. All high ceilings, exposed interior brick and meandering alcoves, the restaurant has a kinky nouvelle Southwestern menu that produces some gems: shrimp and grits, buttery but spicy; beer-battered catfish and homemade fries; Yukon Gold potato pizza with peppered bacon, smoked Gouda and rosemary.

Patton's has competition at Café 909, where a terrific juicy 14-ounce ribeye with poblano sofrito tickles the taste buds with a fierce battle between the rich, salty meat and the bitter bite of the chili.

There's a lot of concern about the invasion of places like Patton's and the Marriott, but the Hill Country is just too pretty and friendly to have remained a secret forever, so now it's a matter of picking your spots.

From Marble Falls, it's an easy and scenic hour's drive on rolling tree-lined highways to Fredericksburg, a German-settled burg that remains a mandatory stop despite the fact that it's become too popular for its own good. The main streets are besieged by B & Bs and antiques shops. But you can still drop by and stay at the Rose Hill Manor outside town with a faux-antebellum main house and a handful of cabins that overlook a large meadow and the Pedernales River Valley.

In town, German and Polish sausage places crowd each other to the point of monotony, but a drafty old Victorian house that calls itself the Nest serves what seems to be French country food, including a sumptuous grilled quail stuffed with boudin sausage and a grilled portobello mushroom and grilled snails in a red tortilla nest with lemon garlic butter - truly a dish that covers all tastes that your mouth can sense.

Farther south in the Hill Country, just west of San Antonio, you'll find many places where you can settle in for a couple of nights while you do some more exploring. My friends like to rough it at the Frio River Cabins, along a beautiful stretch of the river. But my wife and I often choose the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa, built to emulate the area's architecture of bulky stone structures with low-pitched metal roofs.

Find your own base and set out on the gustatory trail: breakfast, lunch and dinner in three quaint towns, looping back to your starting point.

In Bandera, a street of a town on Route 16 with fewer than 1,000 residents, you'll find the 80-year-old OST Restaurant, named for the Old Spanish Trail, which passed through town. On our most recent visit, I ate a huge platter of migas - eggs scrambled hard with bits of tortilla, onions and peppers - and reflected as I gazed at the wooden booths that the place was almost unchanged since I first visited it in the 1960s. In all that time, I have not had the fortitude to try the Cowboy Breakfast - chicken fried steak with creamed gravy, two eggs any style, potatoes, grits or refried beans and biscuits.

Working off the calories is essential. At the Lost Maples State Natural Area, known to have the most vivid fall foliage in the state, you can hike 20 miles of trails, past blinding brilliant yellows, oranges and reds of big-tooth maples and flame leaf sumacs.

Have lunch in Utopia, reached by driving north to Medina on Route 16, then west on Farm Road 337 and then south on Route 187. There is plenty more country food there: ham and grits at the Lost Maples Cafe, for example. But unless you ate light at the OST, which seems unlikely, a better bet might be a Greek salad at Utopia Joe's Coffee House, in a little house right on Main Street.

"Where is everybody?" I asked the young lady at a table next to ours the last time we were there.

She smiled sweetly. "This is Utopia. No one ever comes here."

See? You can even find existentialists in the Hill Country.

1 2 Next Page »