The Root Cafe - Local Little Rock Love

A few weeks ago, at the tail end of a road trip from Michigan back down to Texas, my oldest daughter Ella and I found ourselves looking for breakfast in Little Rock Arkansas. We'd been through this part of the country before, but never really ventured off the interstate.

The Root is just east of Downtown Little Rock in a sweet sunny little neighborhood full of cute brick storefronts and quirky shops. It's the perfect setting for The Root, which is in itself a sweet, sunny, gem of a cafe.

The Root Cafe is part of the food-centric movement that is rediscovering classic southern diner food. For years, this stuff - once pulled from gardens and cooked up slow - has been replaced with increasingly processed schlock, canned and shipped in from across the planet. Places like The Root have gone back to gardens and handmade and have reminded us all what sausage gravy, biscuits, and fried eggs are supposed to taste like.

Ella and I were the first ones in the door that morning - early enough to get a comfortable, breezy spot at a table on the front porch. The day would heat up later, but in early morning it couldn't have been more perfect. I chose a special for the day, sausage blueberry pancakes, and Ella went with the biscuits and gravy.

A note here on the importance of not underestimating the grammatical skills of menu-board writers. The pancake special was "sausage blueberry pancakes", which I interpreted as "sausage [and] blueberry pancakes." Turns out, if they wanted to say "and" they would have. So these were light, delicious pancakes, real maple syrup, local blueberries, and sausage - not on the side in the patties or links, but crumbled right into the pancake batter. It was not an approach I expected, but it was awesome. The savory spice and salt of the sausage was the perfect counterpoint to the little juice bomb blueberries. I am a proud member of the of real-maple-syrup army - I could drink the stuff - but these pancakes were in such simple lovely balance that it was barely needed. Ella's gravy was the other standout - it was a cream gravy, but it was anything but heavy, with local Falling Sky sausage and little hint of bright sweetness to it. With the simple, buttery biscuits, it was near perfect. We both had fried eggs along side, with the kind of bright yellow yolks that only come with the pasture raised chickens that don't live too far up the street. Locally roasted Mountain Bird Coffee was worthy of a visit all by itself.

I have seen enough places like this - East End Eatery in Gainesville FL; Monument Cafe in Georgetown TX; Veritable Quandary in Portland, OR; Fork in The Road in Lansing, MI - to be convinced that this is not a fluke. That in bright, innovative corners of towns in every corner of this country, food is being rediscovered - food that remembers where it came from and tastes like love. The Root is one more reminder that these places are out there, just waiting to be found.

la Barbeque: The Best Brisket I've Ever Had

Let me start out by saying this: I have never eaten at Franklin's. I've had intentions, but then there's always something I'd like to do with my mornings, and one things leads to another, and it's 100 degrees, and I skip it.

So, it is entirely possible that better brisket exists. Just really hard to imagine what that might be after a lunch at la Barbeque.

LA BBQ sits on that fuzzy line between a trailer and storefront. It's outdoor seating (pleasantly shady and bearable even in late June Austin), and there's a pretty straightforward two-window trailer where you order and pay. At the same time, it's a permanent establishment, with two enormous smokers set up off to the side of the lot, firewood stacked up, and a gravel parking lot all on its own. A galvanized trough filled with ice holds sodas in glass bottles - Mexican Coke FTW.

It's kind of the perfect setting, actually, and the operation was remarkably efficient  - busy, but hardly a wait at all.

The glory here, though, is in the meat. I was there with my daughter and we split a few slices brisket and a link of the sausage. Both were off the chart. The brisket - smoked for about 16 hours over a combination of Oak and Pecan wood - was meltingly tender (go with the fatty - the lean was still amazing, but less of transcendental experience). The flavors were layered and balanced, with smokey, almost sweet flavors, against the peppery crust. There was sauce on the tables, but I have never been less tempted to use it. It was also thickly sliced - I used to think I only liked brisket sliced Rudy's style into thin strips - but this cured me of that right quick. It was simply ideal meat, no need to shave it off like deli meats or slather it in sauce like lesser cuts.

The sausage, which we ordered as an afterthought, was no less extraordinary. It was a little looser than others I've had, with a touch more crumble to it and just the faintest of spicy kick. I wish I could identify the spices in there, but it was all too completely integrated to pick out individual notes. Salty and blissful.

We ate all we could hold, and then some.This redefined the meaning of barbeque - we weren't leaving any of it on the tray.

Josephine House, Spectacularly Reinvented

I can barely imagine the Austin Jeffrey's opened into nearly 40 years ago. The city was a third of the size it is now, the downtown skyline stretching up only half as high. In a town like ours, a restaurant from 1975 is monumental, it stretches into legendary history. And over the decades, Jeffrey's kept on plugging away, a fancy neighborhood hangout getting a bit worn around the edges as more and more ambitious dining options opened all around it. Finally, it just didn't fit anymore, and there was a moment of hesitation where I don't know that any of us really knew whether it was going to pull through.

Over the last year, the McGuire Moorman Juggernaut has been restoring and reinventing Jeffrey's and its sister restaurant (they share a kitchen and a breezeway) Josephine House. I have yet to try the mother ship, but Tracy and I stopped by Josephine for a memorably lovely lunch this week.

Josephine House - the teeny tiny house that has mostly served as an event space for years - is Jeffrey's outpost for lunch and a bit of an early happy hour. The indoor dining space isn't much larger than a typical suburban dining room - a handful of tables under a gorgeous front window. To supplement, Josephine House spills outside onto a side patio under a giant ancient tree, onto to the front porch, and even onto a picturesque 8-top on the front lawn. It's getting a little steamy for al fresco dining, but you settle into it, and at least on a breezy 90 degree day in late May, it just works. Every design detail here is thought through - the contrast of  navy and white details, the buckets of lilies, the copper gutters and downspout, the marble table tops. You can't find a space that isn't beautiful.

The menu is straightforward and simple, with first rate details and execution. This is a place that has every potential of being stuffy and pretentious, and while it's definitely a fancy lunch, it's completely approachable. Case in point - Tracy had the BLAB. That would be Bacon Lettuce Avocado Beet. The house made bread was a little spongy with a hint of sour, the bacon deep and smokey, the beet sweet and the green just the faintest hit of bitter. It was brilliant - in just one bite, the tastes bounced from one flavor to the next to the next, trailing on.  In one way, this is just a sandwich with potato chips. But it's one of the best damn sandwiches and some of the best damn potato chips I've tried. And just try to say "I'll have the BLAB" and have it sound pretentious.

I had the Chicken and Egg - again very simple and beautifully conceived - cannellini beans, roasted carrots, roasted brussels, chicken thighs, garlic, with a fried egg balanced on top. With a bit of their sourdough to mop up the broth, this was a stunning, simple stew, and a perfect lunch. We lingered on for a bit, ordering a pot of the Stumptown french press (not bad) and an incredibly rich, dense chocolate torte with marscapone cream and macerated local strawberries. 

I assume that this menu will be shifting on a regular basis - strawberries like that are fleeting - but if what we ate was any indication of how brilliantly it will continue to come together, we have a revival on our hands that could go another 40 years. We'll see what Austin looks like then.

Sway: Pretty Good Thai and a Missed Opportunity

It's taken me a couple of weeks to figure out how I feel about Sway. It didn't take long to recognize it as beautiful, almost magically insulated from the outside world. It didn't take long to see the ambition in the menu, the innovation in the 100% communal table structure or the knowledge of the people working. But in the end, for what it set out to be, I don't think Sway quite made it over the bar.

Sway got a few things absolutely right. The location, right across the street from Elizabeth Street Cafe and Gourdough's, couldn't be hotter, and the people behind Sway, the same folks that brought us La Condesa, could not have built a structure better suited to the space. It is all peace and simple elegance - with no hint that traffic is blustering down South First a few feet from the entrance. Even the sign - a wordless neon lotus flower - gives a little nudge toward the chic calm vibe.

The tables are all communal - massive squares seating about a dozen folks each. The effect is the opposite of what you'd expect with communal seating - the tables are so large that I was actually further away from the people sitting near me than I'd have been at conventional tables, with none of the awkward empty feeling that you can get in a sparsely populated restaurant (we were in at a pretty dead time, mid afternoon).

The menu is limited, and shifting, but well conceived. A few curries, a few noodle dishes, a few small plates, everything with little surprising touches. The dessert menu takes the entire avant-garde Thai thing to an entirely different level - a wild mix of savory and sweet ingredients that came together surprisingly well. The coffee is a special Cuvee blend.

So all this is A+ material. It creates a place you want to love, creates a positive flow that makes little imperfections invisible. Until it doesn't. Sway started off strong, but by the end of the meal, I it seemed clear that they weren't quite up to the task they set themselves up to accomplish.

Neon Lotus Chicken Salad was my favorite of the starters - and maybe my favorite of the meal. I've never had Lotus root before this, and the razor thin fried pieces added a gorgeous nutty crunch to a tart, bright citrus dressing. The peanut curry, with confit chicken leg, was almost fantastic, the chicken meltingly tender, but it was pulled down by an overpowering wallop of salt that drowned out some of the other flavors. Tiger Cry was better, with rare slices of what can often be a pretty tough cut made simply tender and delicate. It was all good, but at the same time I couldn't help feeling like this was a bit of an opportunity missed - with this much control over each ingredient these could have been truly great dishes - but they were merely good. The simpler fare - mostly sides - were better executed - we finished the green beans quickly.

The final element though - and in some ways the moment that broke the suspension of disbelief for good - was the coffee. I adore Cuvee. This not just the best coffee roasted in the neighborhood - IMHO Cuvee is the single best roaster in the country. But what arrived when I ordered a cup of the Sway house blend Cuvee coffee was the single worst executed french press I'd ever encountered. The coffee was ground into boulders - far coarser than what you'd expect for a French Press. It was brought to me without any indication of how long it'd been steeping and generated the most under-extracted, off temp cup of coffee I've had in ages. I looked down at my cup of off color liquid with bits of coffee ground swirling around and realized that something was very wrong here.

Full blogger disclosure - I really enjoyed the meal while I was eating it. Loved it for a bit. But the power of getting that disaster of a cup of coffee along with our $100 lunch bill (two of us, no drinks), was enough to cast a heavy shadow.  When you play at this level, it's not enough to get most things right. You've got to get everything right.

Contigo - Eating Al Fresco in February and Loving It

Strings of miniature bulbs are strung over long picnic tables all across the courtyard. A set of yard games are laid out past the tables, where kids who didn’t know each other 15 minutes ago are playing like old friends. The barn door to the bar is wide open and warm light glints off of shelves of exotic liquors and onto the gravel. We really don’t need the warmth, but a fire pit off to the edge of the courtyard springs to life as the sun sets.

This is what it’s like it to eat outdoors in February in Austin, at least at Contigo, over by the old airport. There is hardly any building at all – just an open space covered by a simple roof, and an open space that is not covered by anything. Somewhere, there is a kitchen nestled back in there, churning out amazingly nuanced dishes, but it’s pretty well hidden from view.

I don’t mean to get all whimsical on you guys. I know how you all hate that, but there’s really no other way to describe this place. The food by itself is fantastic, but it’s made even better by the idyllic simplicity and camaraderie of the surroundings.

Like many in the new crop of East Austin trend setters, everything here that can be made in-house is - bacon, bread, pate, sausage. But this is not so much comfort food reimagined, as it is comfort food rediscovered. The sausage in the pigs-in-a-blanket is what a lil’ smokey was meant to be; the dough surrounding them is chewy, freshly kneaded, wrapped and baked. Green beans are tempura fried and served with a kicking little Asian aioli. Pate is lush and accompanied by the single best preparation of eggplant I’ve ever had – sliced razor thin, tempura fried, drizzled with honey. More bread (or less pate) would be welcome – the proportion seemed a bit off – but it was all delicious. And that’s sort of the way Contigo rolls.

Big plates are a little more mixed than the small ones, with some really spectacular bright spots, and a few small misses. Our kids gravitated to the burgers, and while I appreciate that they were not fancied up and messed with in any fundamental way (predominate spicing was salt and pepper), the buns were a little sweet for our taste and the fries were well seasoned but a little floppy. You get the sense that the kitchen’s primary love is not churning out burgers. On the other end of the spectrum, the Pot Roast with spaetzle was absolutely luscious – unbelievably tender, with layers of flavor and winey broth that defined and rounded out the spaetzle beautifully. The mussels were also good, with a booming thai-inspired lime/coconut broth and julienned root veggies. Not a lot of variety on the desserts, but what they have are lovely – apple handpies with a little glass of spiced milk and dense, lovely buckwheat chocolate cake.

You leave this place feeling like you’ve done more than eat well – you leave Contigo feeling like you’ve lived well.