Rocking on the Lake at the Gnarly Gar

You’ve gotta love the name for this floating restaurant on Lake Travis near Little Hust Harbor. The Gar is a lake fish and owner Todd Hynes challenged his staff to come up with a unique branding concept. One of his employees, an Aggie, came up with the Gnarly Gar.

This may be a generational thing but when I was in college gnarly was a word that lacked many good connotations. But times change: gnarly is now kind of cool for the under 30 crowd; as in, “hey I hung ten on that wave dude and it was gnarly.” Or, there were some smokin’ babes at this gnarly bar the other night.” Who knew?

But we got a chance to take a boat from the harbor this past Saturday night over to this floating dining and drinking emporium. And it was fun.

We sat at a table overlooking the water (pretty hard not to find one at this place since it’s on the water) and ordered queso wth chips and Shrimp Diablo. The notion that the Gnarly Gar rocks is both literal and figurative. When some big-ass jet boat powers by and sends up a mighty wake, the restaurant literally rocks. But if you’ve ever been on a cruise ship, you’ll recognize the kind of rocking to which I refer. It’s mild and not at all obtrusive. And the food, in fact the whole scene rocks as well.

We sat across from some smokin’ hot babes who were having a bachelorette party. They seemed totally comfortable with the “gnarly” vibe as did the guy who had obviously had too many cervesas on the lake that day and was hitting on each woman with drunken sincerity. They had a really decent country rock band as well.

The burger I had was really good (totally fresh roll) and the Cubano sandwich rivals Chef Ben Nathan’s at Chez Zee. The Philly Cheesesteak was also good. They also have a house signature drink made with Meyer’s dark rum, orange juice, pina colada mix and nutmeg. A few of those and things can get even gnarlier!!

Of course there were the usual comments from those who recognized me. “Hey dudes, the critic is in the house!” “Give us a preview of your review Rob.” “Since you never, EVER trash any places, we must assume that you like this one too!” (Must have been a Yelper.)

Okay, but the truth is I do like the place. Todd Hynes had a successful run with another lake joint called Aunt Tilly’s and I’ll tell you what, he gets it! The demographics are a little young for my crowd, but so what? Lately, like Benjamin Button I feel like I’ve been getting younger every day.. So bring on the twenty somethings! I can hang with the best of them. And that, without question, is most certainly gnarly.