Texas Tater N' More

144 7^th Street

Hillsboro, Mo

On Facebook

The new burger chart

I’d been meaning to go back to this place sooner, and more often. The ladies that own Texas Taters were really supportive of the local Library effort and deserve more patronage.
The day had started out drab, gray and drippy but had cleared up and warmed up quite nicely, in the 50’s by dinner time. I was ready for some food and mildly excited by the fact that Texas Taters were now offering burgers according to their Facebook page. I saw this as wonderful news for those families that are not unanimous in their desire for a baked potato. 

The Place:

Cavernous interior

 On 7^th street… which I think is a joke since I really don’t think Hillsboro has seven actual streets. I just know that it’s visible from Main Street, north of BB. It’s above an auto parts store and has a drive-up window.

This building was probably something else before it was a restaurant/diner and its not the ideal building for what could be a cozy little eatery. Inside it is almost cavernous, high ceilings and about twice as much floor space as it needs. They keep it very shiny and clean though. The white tile floors and bright blue walls cheer it up, the Mocha painted wall in the back tones the brightness down a bit. In the background a radio station was playing, Christmas music, which I was already pretty sick of. At work they’ve been playing it endlessly for about three weeks, enough already.

We stepped up to the menu poster on the wall by the counter and studied our options.

The Food:

Tablecloth

Angel wasn’t with us the only other time we’d been in. She studied the menu like it was a college final. Angel likes baked potatoes though, I mean who doesn’t?

I’d decided to get a burger since it was a new offering. I queried the ladies on the sides, the size of the burger, toppings, which they had listed as LTPO, which took me a moment to figure out that it stood for  lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and onions. I also asked about their ‘sauce’ listing. It turns out that they were referring to ketchup, mustard, mayo, etc. I went for a classic burger though they offered more exotic southwestern configurations. I asked for mustard and ketchup as the 'sauce'. When I couldn’t decide on the side, crinkle fries or wedges, the lady offered to serve a little of both. Very accommodating.

Classic Burger with plenty of PLTO

Sure enough Angel built herself a baked potato with gravy, grilled chicken and then threw a wrench at rational thinking and added broccoli. Adam also got a potato, one of the standards, a ‘Cowboy’ which was topped with barbecue pork, but traded out the onion straws for more bacon. Adam likes bacon, because he’s a good, honest, patriotic American. As for drinks, we stayed on script, Tea, Diet Coke and root beer. I had noticed in the back decanters for Luzianne. These ladies are not just nice, they’re smart and classy.

We sat at a booth admiring the colorful Texas-themed table coverings. We sat at the ‘boots’ booth.

We sat for a moment chatting and slurping our drinks out of the 24 ounce Styrofoam cups, which I do not particularly care for.
 Angel had taken Rudy, our foster dog of multiple breeds, through her morning training class and was quite proud of his progress. He came to us very, very skittish but has warmed up a lot since we’ve started socializing him and letting him stay upstairs. That way he spends the entire day around noises, comings and goings and in close proximity to other dogs. Rudy has adopted Adam as his daddy. Adam is a softie for Rudy as well.

A gentleman brought our baskets to us in short order.

Grilled Chicken ad (blech) broccoli.

The potatoes are huge, Texas-sized. The burger wasn’t quite as big as I thought it would be from the description I was given and this was a good thing. I hate wasting food. It was certainly big enough and sided with a very generous portion of mixed crinkle fries and skin-on wedges. The crinkle fries were nice and crispy, the wedges might have been crispier had they been left in the fryer a bit longer, or pre-cooked a little. They were not bad at all, just not as crispy as they could have been.

Angel and Adam dug in and I didn’t hear much from them for several minutes.

“I wonder if you can get a baked potato with a side of fries?” She asked. Of course you can, this is America!

The burger was pretty good, grill-fried, medium rare, thin and tender. There was plenty of LTPO, all fresh. The Texas-branded bun was quite good, and a clever touch.

Cowboy, with extra bacon

 I polled the family as they finished up, rather as they stopped eating. These potatoes are huge, and as the lady pointed out to us she’s never been taken up on her offer to serve up seconds to anyone. 

“The chicken was good, fresh and seasoned well, the broccoli was cooked perfectly and the portions were generous.” Is sort of what she said, my note-taking skills don't allow for verbatim comments. “Really good.” She added.

Adam had only a few words, all of them positive. “The pork got to be a little sweet after a while” was as bad a comment as he could muster. Both of them left topping-less carcasses of baked potato skin. Angel added that it would be nice if they offered up a tub of butter or margarine for the last bit of the potato since once the toppings are gone, the remainder is a bit dry.

Summary:

I like this place, I really do. We will go back. I’m not crazy about the building, but there’s not much that can be done about that. There are not many available buildings in the tiny shire of Hillsboro, so short of building from scratch; you have to settle for what’s available. I love, love, love! the idea of a baked potato place. The ladies that run it are very nice and accommodating.  They really seemed to care what we thought and were quite proud of their offerings.

The bill came to a mere twenty three dollars and change, which is pretty cheap for three full meals.

Aside from the potatoes and now, burgers, the place offers several sandwiches and a good variety of ice cream and frozen treats. I’m not sure how anyone has room for dessert when they finish one of these huge taters, but it’s there if you can handle it.
Highly recommended! They also cater and deliver.