Is Timbo's the New Little Hipps?

According to the blurb on its menu, when Little Hipps closed in 2002, a group of its employees got together and vowed to re-create the iconic restaurant. (I've always been curious about why the owner of the original chose to simply close it down, rather than selling it for what should have been a hefty sum.) They found space just off Broadway at the entrance to the Pearl Brewery complex, and opened in 2003.

Anyone who remembers the atmosphere in Little Hipps knows that it will take years for Timbo's to acquire the necessary jumble of idiosyncratic wall hangings, license plates, beer-ad gimmickry, and souvenirs to really be able to claim the same kind of patina; but they're well on their way. The seating appears to be copied from the original wooden booth benches -- if it actually is original, it's been freshened up, which would seem unpardonable in a shrine -- and the place features the same sort of individual juke-boxes as Hipp's had. Otherwise, the place is much brighter, and newer, and cleaner. But given time (a luxury in the restaurant business, but here we are seven years on and they're still going) they should be able to dim the bulbs, stain the floors, and put some scratches and gouges in the furnishings. And eventually, if they last long enough to do that, it will be Timbo's that's the San Antonio landmark, with Little Hipps just a vague memory to an increasingly small number of aging residents.

But the main thing, obviously, is the food. Timbo's has (according to the menu) bought or been given the rights to the name "shypoke eggs", which I can remember ordering with some trepidation, and being vastly relieved to find it was just a name for a particular arrangement of cheeses on a tortilla chip, and not some possibly Scotch concoction of inedible specialty so-called food. They were actually pretty good, too, although not as delectable as a good order of nachos at most any taquería. And once I, in ignorance, ordered a "large" burger -- Timbo's menu is kinder than Little Hipps's was; it actually warns you what you're getting. Until recently, that burger many years ago was the only one I'd ever needed a go-box for. 

The menu consists of burgers and sides. There are a few other possibilities on there -- a chicken sandwich, maybe, or something else for the nontraditionalists among us; but those people don't belong in a temple of tradition like Timbo's, and really shouldn't be encouraged. The choices are, at bottom, do you want cheese, and how much meat do you want in your burger? Selecting a beer is a much more involved decision than selecting a meal.

It has been, obviously, at least eight years since I or anyone else tasted a burger from Little Hipps, and I think Timbo's does a fair job of approximating the experience. Their grill, possibly, hasn't acquired the layer of residue needed to give the patties quite the same flavour, and the burgers as presented do not revel in an excess of lettuce, as they used to at Hipps. They're good on their own merit, but not yet up to the perhaps unachievable standard of Little Hipps. And the tater-tots, which used to be called Hippuppies at the Olde Place, seem pre-fab compared with fading memory. (The tots at the Armadillo, which occupies Little Hipps's old building on McCullough, have more of the look and feel of what I remember from the original restaurant.) 

The service was excellent, which was always the rule at Little Hipps too. In the long run, that, as much as the food, and more than the homage to the departed diner, will keep people coming back.