Revival Public House (Closed)

The weekend of the cancelled 2016 Food & Wine Festival, several Austin restaurants advertised specials for ticket holders.  One of these was Revival Public House and this was their special offer that caught our interest…

  • Downtown restaurant Revival Public House is giving out a free appetizer to guests with AF&WF receipts, including Creole corn pups, kimchi frito pie, and others.

So the four of us (all of Austin Food & Wine Festival ticket holders) went to Revival Public for Happy Hour.

 

Thinking the four of us (each being festival ticket holders) were entitled to four free appetizers according to their advertisement.  But when we asked what our “other” options were besides the corn pups and frito pie we were surprised by their response.
We were told that for every 4 people with AF&WF receipts they would give one free appetizer and our choice was limited to the Creole corn pups, kimchi frito pie, and the crispy pickle chips.
So for our one free appetizer we chose the…
Creole Corn Pups Andouille sausage, cornmeal tempura, creole mustard, ketchup  
These were normally $2 during Happy Hour.  They pretty much tasted like a regular corn dog (good, but nothing special).  The sausage skin was a little difficult to bite through.
Before coming here we had looked at their Happy Hour menu and decided we wanted their Bacon Wrapped Dates.  And even though this wasn’t one of their free options, we had our heart set on the dates so we ordered them anyway (plus they were only $7 during Happy Hour…
Bacon Wrapped Dates TX goat cheese, apple, cider gastrique, sea salt  
These were good, but not really worth their regular non-Happy Hour price of $10 (or $2 each).  They were pretty tiny.
We then got the bill and saw that we were charged for the corn pups and at the non-Happy Hour price of $4.  This required the assistance of a manager to get straightened.
So overall we were very disappointed.  The food was okay, but the service was not great and their advertising seemed deceptive.  I would have rated this experience at Revival Public House only a 3, which is a bit lower than the 3 1/2 star rating given to it by both Yelp and Trip Advisor reviewers.  However, since this restaurant closed sometime in the last year’s time, it makes this review defunct.   But judging from our experience, I wasn’t all that surprised that this restaurant, which just opened in Dec. 2015, wasn’t around for very long.