Austin catch-up

Alright, when I normally go out of town, I take pictures of everything.  I want people to experience everything and I want to write about everything.  But, after I get back and relax, the pictures just get pushed back further on my camera and I gradually forget what I was supposed to do.  Things are slow and as I look and see that I haven't written anything in a while, I need to catch things up and get rolling.

Austin is a great city for food.  It is starting to get to the level that St. Louis is at.  Every city has their fancy places and every city has their small places.  Every city has their farm-to-table and every city has their food trucks.  What makes certain places stand out though, is how they do it.

On 6th street, downtown, is a place for pub crawlers to get a complete hard-on.  The whole street has pubs and bars located side by side, for about 3 blocks or more, down the street, on both sides.  If you had started at 9am and went to each bar, had a bite to eat and a drink and listened to some music and then moved to the next bar, it would probably take you most of the day to finish every bar.  However, I didn't go into any bars: I had my two kids with me.  So, what do you do in an area which caters to the over 21 crowd and you have a 5 and a 7 year old?

We followed our noses and found ourselves near a pizza joint.  This place with a hole in the wall.  It had room for a doorway and a very small window and inside was a guy making and selling pizzas.  It was decorated with New York memorabilia and all sorts and had a very pizza theme to everything.  While the decoration was pizza, behind the glass, WAS pizza. You could see the yummy, steamy goodness of real tasty pizza.  Not some stupid paper thin crust, it was full, bready, yeasty happiness and with a tangy sauce and good ratio of cheese to meat, it was a great meal.

While this picture, shows the pizza a bit disheveled  this was after a long walk while carrying the pizza and holding the hands of said 5 and 7 year old.  So, even though it was a bit beat up, it tasted awesome.  I'd give it a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.

 As we were wondering around one day, we found a food truck.  We had learned that food trucks are starting to hit Austin and they have a few spots around the city where they stay.  While driving around, we found one: Lulu B's.  Lulu B's makes Vietnamese sandwiches, which means that they take the awesome flavors and stick them in perfectly crusty and yummy French bread rolls.

Nothing was too expensive with the average cost around $6-$10 each.  There were salads, rolls and sandwiches and there was actually nothing that tasted bad.  Every herb was fresh from the mint leaves to the lemongrass.  Everything tasted so good that the leftovers went into the refrigerator and became lunch for the next day.

My suggestion is, if you are in the downtown Austin area, hunt down this truck and eat there.  Everything is good, I'd give it a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.

For dinner one night, we wanted something fun and close, since this location was across the street from our hotel.  We ate at a restaurant called Pirana Killer Sushi, and the lit up sign could be seen perfectly in the dark.

Pirana Killer Sushi is listed as an upscale sushi restaurant and it was inside.  I saw every guy wearing at least a collared shirt with slacks and about every woman in a nice dress and heels.  It isn't really a place to bring kids, but sure enough, they were great serving us.  They were very friendly and makes you think twice that perhaps nice sushi places are okay to bring kids.

We ordered some Japanese noodles with chicken for the boys along with some gyoza and they tasted delicious.

I ordered a Korean Beef Tenderloin and expected something more Asian in presentation and got this:

But the flavor was there, the asparagus as cooked perfectly and seasoned and the beef was tender and juicy: a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.

My wife ordered some sushi and sashimi:

Now, it is a bit more expensive than the golden arches, for your kids, but my kids liked to be in this "grown up" atmosphere and I'm sure that if your kids are good and not so loud, they will like it and fit in here just fine.

The last place we stopped at was called Wholly Cow.

Wholly Cow is a burger joint, situated about a block from the Capital building, and all of their beef comes from grass fed cows.  So, no hormones, no added anything but just regular naturally raised cows.  I know this may sound cliche', but the burgers tasted like burgers.  Albeit, the burger I ordered, tasted like a very good and delicious hamburger, and I know that it tasted better than most other burgers I have had.  I'd give my burger a 4 out of 5.

The place was busy and with more people standing in line than sitting with food I knew there would be a wait, but worth it.

My wife, who is on weight watchers, wanted a burger without the bun.  They have something for that.  I think they called it a "Paleo-burger".  So, this burger was a regular burger except, instead of a bun, they did a smart move and placed the burger and fixings in between two grilled portabella mushrooms.

So, I know I mentioned a bad place to go in Austin and I hope these good places make up for it.

St. Louis has nothing to worry about.

The other night, my wife and I had a free night in downtown Austin, Texas and decided that a night out, at one of the trendy and local, seasonal, farm to table restaurants may do the trick.  This restaurant, Parkside, has won awards and attention for their raw bar and oysters as well as their use of sustainable and seasonal foods.   Not for their other foods.  Now, when my wife and I stood there, waiting 10 minutes past out 8:00 reservation, we wondered if it could be as good as other great restaurants in this same category: like Farmhaus.  The answer is 'no'.

The interior of Parkside reminds me a lot of Taste.  It is dark, the lights are high up and everything has dark wood colored tones.  The hostess staff are dressed in black.  There was seating near the bar and more seating in a separate dining room behind the bar in the next room.  What was odd about our wait, was that they seated several people who just walked in and asked for a seat, before us.  So, right off the bat, reservations here mean nothing.  After being sat at a table/booth combo, we were greeted by our waiter who was not very friendly or knowledgable.  He didn't know what the different selections of oysters had in them, where they were from, or even where they were from.  It was odd since this place is famous for their oyster selection.  As we looked at the menu, we noticed that the food was priced a bit high, which would be alright if the food came in reasonable sized portions and were great, but neither was the case at Parkside.  We ordered some drinks, he left and returned with them and then without saying a word, left.  We didn't see him come back to our table for 10 minutes.  Our waiter seemed too occupied with the large table of 8 people next to us, which was odd since they were more than 6 and had an automatic 18% tip added in and would make sense that the guy should work on the tip that wasn't automatic.

There was a good selection of food and as such, we both selected some appetizers.  We were told that the beef marrow dish is cooked to order and would be about 20-30 minutes and since after we waited 10 minutes for him to come back, we figured that the 20-30 minute wait wouldn't be that bad.  So, while we waited, and waited, finally our starters came out.  The first one that came out was the Kampachi, which was pieces of fish with some blood oranges and ginger for $12.  We thought it would be a good sized plate for $12.  This was it:

Was it any good?  Neh.  The blood orange segments completly ruined any good flavors from the dish.  So, would we order it again?  No.  It stands at a 2 out of 5 stars.

I'm thinking that I made a good decision and set off to accept my Potato Gnocchi with sunchoke butter, arugula and a citrus gel.  This is what I got:

Someone needs to go back to cooking school.  Gnocchi are supposed to be a little firm, a gummy, toothsom texture, like al-dente' pasta.  Guess what this was? Mushy.  They tasted like someone mashed some potatoes and then cooked them in little balls in boiling water, like you would cook spaetzle.  They were flavorless and not seasoned at all.  I tasted not even salt or pepper.  The sunchoke butter was super sweet and there were these orange segments which were tart.  The citrus gel, was a runny sauce.  If you say that something is a gel, then it better be a gel, not a runny sauce. Here's the thing, if myself or my wife can make food better than what we pay for at a restaurant, then the restaurant did a bad job on it.  This is a 2 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.  For $10, I'd say that the price was a bit high.

As we are still waiting for the marrow bones, we got one of the other starters which my wife had ordered.  She picked out the Caramelized Cauliflower with chili, calabrese and capers.  This was for $7 and we had a small plate here: 

So, we paid $7 for partially cooked cauliflower and a few capers.  What was most promanint about the dish was the large leaf of parsley there, for no reason.  A 2 out of 5 stars.

So, finally Marrow Bones comes out with an herb salad, a whole $14.50.  This is what is delivered to us:

First thing, flat leaf parsley leaves, strewn over the bones with some bony fescue, is not an herb salad.  Second thing is, that when something so rich and fatty is served, something that is tart or acidic should be served with it.  Traditionally the greens are tart or sour and there should be some vinegar; even a simple dressing that should go with this dish.  But there was none.  It was fat on burnt toast.  The fat was also quite boring.  At Truffles, a St. Louis restaurant, when we last ordered some beef marrow bones there, they cooked them, then scooped the marrow out, mixed it with herbs and spices and then placed it back in the bones for presentation.  So, they were not boring as in this place  I love my marrow, I really do, but this was just good, like a 3 out of 5 stars.  Its just that for the price, we expected a bit more time and effort.

The last dish was the real winner of the evening.  I figured that what looks like to be the strangest item on the menu, should be the best one to pick.  So, I ordered the Grilled Hill Country Rabbit with roasted carrots, green garlic spaetzle, carrot puree' crema, and red wine vinegarette for $24.  

Does it look like rabbit?  The rabbit, is in these disc shaped patties.  They had what tasted like bacon, wrapped around them and the whole thing tasted like bad tasting ham.  Really.  I know that rabbit does not taste like ham, so why did it taste like turned pork or salted and brine-marinated pork.  The meat was awful and even if they made a mistake and gave me ham, it was so salty, so terribly salt, you could kill a room full of slugs with one bite.  So, let's look for the carrots.  There is one that is bright orange, in the 6 o'clock area of the photo.  At about the 9 o'clock area are two more carrots.  These were more roasted than the other one and even worse is that the two dark roasted ones, were so burnt that there was no flesh there to eat!  The green garlic spaetzle, were the best part of this dish.  I ate every one of them and if you could take one part of this dish out and separate it, I would take those.  They alone were like a 4 out of 5 stars.  They were awesome and I really did eat every one.  It was just sad that it was so salty and I couldn't eat it.  I will say this: this is the last one.  My wife kept egging me into returning the dish, because it was so bad.  I told her it was okay, but after this, restaurants look out, I will ask to return items that are bad or suck.

My thoughts?  Parkside sucks.  Parkside is also supposed to be an award winning restaurant and award winning restaurants need to be good.  So, for St. Louis which has a number of award winning restaurants which pop up all the time, they have nothing to worry about.