Here's a great spot everyone should take time to visit if they’re anywhere around Johnson Space Center and enjoying all the great NASA novelties!
The Outpost is a bar-slash-restaurant known as a longtime favorite hangout for astronauts, flight controllers and other various ground crew personnel. Yep, here's where the first space travelers and moonwalkers used to kick back after work.
It looks like a tiny barn that could collapse into a dusty cloud of kindling at any moment. Guidebooks and travel web sites for Houston mince no words, outright referring to it as a "swamp," "hole-in-the-wall" or a "dive" – which it is... but in a quaint and charming "shack turned historical monument" kinda way.
The structure itself served as barracks at Ellington Field during World War II, but moved sometime in the 1960s to its current location near Interstate 45 on Kings Lynn Street (southwest corner of NASA Parkway and Egret Bay Blvd.) Since then, a succession of owners have acquired an incredible collection of space paraphernalia, astronaut photos and autographs, mission emblems, flight gear, and a tasteful memorial to the crew of Shuttle Columbia:
The Outpost was featured in two films, Rocketman and Space Cowboys, as well as the ABC television movie, The Challenger. Representative sets of the astronaut hangout were also constructed for Apollo 13 and Armageddon.
I'm sorry that I cannot offer an honest review of the cuisine, because I don't make a habit of eating Hot Wings or Jalapeño Burgers bigger than my HEAD. Reading the menu wasn’t particularly inspiring, though I admit to being curious as to what the "Porker Salad" or the "Oink Oink + Moo Moo Burger” might look like.
But I understand the menu is quite popular with the NASA locals... who say that AsCans still celebrate the completion of program training here.
Definitely check out my photo gallery or their photo gallery, if for no other reason than to marvel at the insanely inappropriate saloon doors. Or join their e-mail alerts, to see when they have live musical acts, and annual barbeque, chili or gumbo cooking contests.
Thanks Joe & Chris, for showing us this awesome spot! :)
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