The Subterranean Room

[livingdeb]

When I get a weekday off from work, it's nice to see if places that usually aren't open when I'm not at work are open or if places that have only weekday lunch specials are open. Today we visited the Clay Pit, which has a very affordable lunch buffet, but only on weekdays.



When we arrived there were no other customers there and one of the employees asked if we would like to see the downstairs room. We said we did. Then I said, "Hey, we're following a stranger into a dark room. Didn't we learn anything from D&D?"

But since we live in basically a land of happy fun, there was no trap awaiting us. The guy flipped on a switch and we saw a very interesting dining room. Sorry, no pictures. But it had the same stone walls as the exterior. The ceiling was low, maybe seven feet high, but there were several arched roof supports which required even people my height (5' 3" = 160 cm) to duck. There were four tables on each side, and a concrete floor with relatively new tile inlay.

The room used to be a storage room for the general store upstairs. The stairway used to be an outdoor staircase. Being underground, the room used to be relatively cool. (Today it was relatively warm because the AC wasn't on down there.) Also, there used to be a door leading to a tunnel that went across the street to a brothel, which came in handy during brothel raids. Now there is a modern jam box in the corner.

Clayton Stapleton has a similar version of the story with the addition that the place is haunted.

Comments

Cheap eats at Clay Pit

[fraeuleinchen.livejournal.com]

If you want to visit for dinner, I'd recommend using a coupon purchased from www.restaurant.com. I'm signed up with them and get discount codes by email often. A dining certificate (i.e. coupon) for $25 worth of food costs $12.50 but I never buy it without a discount, which is always 50% or 60%. So for $6.25, $25 of your meal is paid for. The only catches: (1) your total must exceed $35 pre-coupon; and (2) only valid for use Sunday through Thursday.

There are other good Austin restaurants (and some not-so-great) with coupons on the site, so I'd recommend checking it out.