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.

Grubbus Cooks: Apple Tart

So, by part three of my New Year's Eve posting marathon, you may be wondering - what's up with the year-end spree after just about disappearing this fall? And all this home cooking? Grubbus? Hello?

Grubbus has been a little light lately because, well, I'm writing a book. I'm still getting used to how that sounds. A few months back, I signed a publishing contract with an amazing little publisher out of Charlotte, The History Press, to write a book we're calling Austin Food: The Story of a Local Eating Revolution. Very excited about this. We're chugging along getting that all researched and written, and, as a result, Grubbus hasn't had quite the attention it had before. That's fixing to change in 2013, but for now, that's what's been keeping the posts infrequent.

So infrequent, that, round about this afternoon, I figured out I was a couple of posts short of where Grubbus needed to be, year-end-wise. And so, this. Three of my favorite recipes of 2012. Things that I've made for friends, food that's marked special occasions all year.

This recipe - the last one for tonight - is for a wickedly simple, absolutely beautiful apple tart.

Apple Tart

The Filling:
2 lbs apples (my favorite: half granny smith and half braeburns)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons butter, melted plus 1 tablespoon butter cut into 1/2 inch chunks
3-4 tablespoons sugar (I like coarse sugar best here)

The Tart Dough
1 cup flour
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch chunks

1/4 cup cold water

The Dough Part 1:
Work the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter or two knives. It just takes a few minutes - and you don't need to worry about consistency - some decent-sized pieces of butter will still be in place. You can also run this about 5 seconds in a food processor. Pour in the water, just a little at a time, and work the dough until it comes together in a ball. Get it good and stuck together, flatten it a little, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

The Filling:
Peel and core the apples, and cut into thin slices - about 1/8 inch. If you happen to have a Mandoline - game on - it's perfect for this. Sprinkle the slices with the lemon juice and set aside while you roll out the dough.

The Dough Part 2:
Preheat the oven to 400.

Unwrap the dough and set out on a floured board. If it's really cold you may need to let it sit a bit. Roll it out from the center to the edges, adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking, until it's about 1/8 inch thick. This is a free form tart, and, just like the empanadas, I like to use a plate as a template to cut it into a circle - in this case I use a 10 1/2 inch dinner plate.

Assembly:
Put the rolled out crust on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Lay the apple slices on the tart dough in concentric overlapping rings, starting about an inch from the outside edge and working your way in. You should be able to fit 2 overlapping layers with a little space left in the middle. Overlapping is the key here: I try to cover about a third of the apple slice next in line for each slice within the ring, and layer the next ring about a third over the last one, with the slices facing the opposite direction. This all sounds harder than it is - just approximate the illustration, and you're golden.

To close up the crust, just pinch a little of the dough together every inch or so along the perimeter. This will lift up the dough to make a short wall around the apples. Brush the pinched-together outer edge with the butter. It's a lot of butter. Keep brushing. Drop the extra butter chunks over the apples, and start sprinkling sugar, with extra attention to heavy sprinkling on the crust.

Bake for about 40 minutes - you're looking for golden brown on the crust.

That's it. Wickedly simple. Absolutely beautiful.

Adapted from Alice Waters, The Art of Simple Food.

Grubbus Cooks: Chicken Empanadas

I should be clear about this right up front. These are really good empanadas, better than just about any you could score in town. Just about. Because the empanadas at Buenos Aires Cafe, full of delicious and some kind of black magic, beat the pants off any other entrant in the entire grand empanda universe.

Chicken Empanadas
12 empanadas - about 4 servings.

The Filling
1 split bone-in chicken breast (2 breasts, about 1.5 pounds)
1 tablespoon neutral oil (I like grapeseed)
1 medium-size onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1-2 teaspoons ground ancho chile (or good chili powder - I like Ancho Mama)
4-5 chipotles in adobo (I like San Marcos better than Goya - a 7oz can works well)
4 cups chicken broth
1 tomato, peeled and chopped
1 lime, juiced
1/3 lb. Cotija Cheese, grated (sharp cheddar works OK as well)

The Dough
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup masa (or masa harina - in Austin, the easiest to find is Maseca, in the 5lb bag)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes (lard works well here too)
1 egg yolk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup milk

The Dough, Part 1
Whisk together the flour, masa, baking powder, and salt. Use a pastry cutter or two knives to cut in the butter, or just toss it all in the food processesor with the regular blade for about 5 seconds. Just like pie dough, the texture should be gritty, along the lines of super-coarse corn meal.

Whisk together the egg yolk and the water and add to the dough a little at a time, gently working the dough until it comes together into a ball - this may or may not take all of the water/egg mixture. This is a dry dough, and it'll be a little crumbly until you get it good and chilled.

Cut the dough ball into 12 sections, wrap each in plastic wrap, and throw them all into the fridge for at least 20 minutes. 20 minutes works, but best results for me were when it chilled for about an hour. While the dough is chilling...

The Filling, Part 1
Preheat the oven to 450

Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Heat a large pot (at least 6 quarts) over medium high heat. Add the oil and sear the chicken breast for a minute or so on each side. It should stick a little. This is good. We'll use all those bits that stick to the pot later. Remove the chicken to a plate to rest.

Add the onion to the pot and saute for about 5 minutes, until softened, then add the garlic and saute for a minute or so more. Add the broth and deglaze the pan with a wooden spoon.

Now, everything else goes in. Cumin, ancho, chiplotle, tomatoes. Crank up the heat. When it comes to a boil, add the chicken. At this point, you are dealing with some seriously spicy broth, at least by my standards. No worries. The chicken that comes out has only the mildest of kicks. Reduce the heat to low, maintaining a simmer, and cover. Let the chicken simmer for another 25 minutes. While the filling is simmering...

The Dough, Part 2
Take each little dough ball in turn and roll it out to about 9 x 9 inches on a floured board. If it's too hard to work the dough, warm it up just a bit in your hands. If it's too sticky, more flour. I use an 8 1/2 inch salad plate as a template, and cut around the edge to get the dough to an even circle. Hang on to the extra dough until you're through assembly.

The Filling, Part 2
Remove the chicken breasts from the broth, and into a good-sized bowl. Remove and discard the skin. Add about a cup of the broth. Using two forks, shred the chicken down to the bone. Toss the bone. Add the lime juice. If it still seems a bit dry, add more broth.

Assembly
Final stretch here. Take a dough-circle, add a good-size dollop of the filling, top with the cotija, brush the edges of the dough-circle with water and fold it over. Using your fingers first, fold the edge of the dough over, rolling the bottom layer over the top layer. Use a fork to crimp the edges together securely. If things start to fall apart a little at this stage, just patch it up with the extra dough left over from rolling it out.

Place the empanadas on a parchment-lined baking sheet (I use a little high-heat spray to make sure they come up easy, but that may just be paranoia - I think they'd be fine without it). Brush each empanada with milk, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

Serve with the lime wedges and salsa (don't laugh -  but I love the La Frontera Chipotle Salsa with this).

That's it. You can stuff these with anything, though I don't have a reliable source for black magic. You need to hit Buenos Aires Cafe for that.

Grubbus Cooks: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

I love Saturday mornings. No one pays much attention to the clock, the kids stay in their pajamas all morning, and, sometimes, we get it together to get ingredients for something interesting for breakfast. If the smells coming from the kitchen are good enough, and we get a first round of coffee going early, no one complains much about eating a bit later than usual. Bliss.

This week – Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Macerated Berries. I’ve tackled this a few times, with a few different variations, but consensus was that this particular combination worked the best.



Lemon Ricotta Pancakes
6-8 servings

· 2 cups ricotta (a 16oz container works well)
· 2 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
· 1 lemon zested and juiced
· 2 cups all-purpose flour
· 2 tablespoons baking powder
· 1/2 teaspoon salt
· 4 large eggs, separated
· 2 tablespoons butter (melted and cooled) plus about 2 tablespoons for cooking
· 1 1/2 cups whole milk

For macerated berries (optional)
· 2 cups raspberries
· 1/4 cup sugar

· 2 tablespoons lemon juice (about 1 lemon)

Bowl 1: Dry
Whisk or sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Bowl 2: Frothy
Beat the egg whites and 2 tbs of the sugar until soft peaks form.

Bowl 3: Wet
Whisk egg yolks, milk, 2 tbs of the sugar, 1 tbs lemon juice and the zest together. Gradually add the melted butter while continuing to whisk to work it in completely.

Bowl 4: Berries (Optional)
Combine berries, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir every few minutes as you work through the rest of the recipe.

Combine:

Pour Bowl 3: Wet into Bowl 1: Dry and stir gently until the flour mixture is combined Lumps are not a problem. There’s more stirring coming up.

Add a dollop from Bowl 2: Frothy and all of the ricotta and give it a few more gentle stirs to combine.

Add the remaining contents of Bowl 2: Frothy and fold it in to the batter. The egg whites should just barely disappear into the batter, which should be getting good and silky.

Cook:
At this point, you may be noticing that there are TWO tablespoons of baking powder and 4 egg whites in this stuff. And, yes, as a result, these are major league fluffy. Fluffy clouds of pancake. The trick is cooking them slow.

Preheat the largest decent skillet or griddle you have over medium-low heat. Add a pat of butter and drop the batter in – about 1/3 c. per pancake. Cooking time will vary, but you’re shooting for a minute and half on the first side, about a minute on the other. Adjust heat to accommodate. Stash finished pancakes in a warm oven as you work through batches.

Serve:
I like these with Bowl 4: Berries and a little powdered sugar. If you don't do the berries, these are also mighty tasty with maple syrup.

Unexpected Favorite: Elizabeth Street Cafe

I didn't want to love Elizabeth Street Cafe. I thought that it would be too corporate, too precisely choreographed, too highly designed to be really good. I was wrong. Elizabeth Street is a little slicker than most homegrown places, but it is nevertheless staffed with people who love what they do, a menu that is innovative and beautifully executed, and a space that takes your breath away.

First things first, Elizabeth Street is gorgeous. Every time you round a corner, the color and space and light leaps out at you - I'm not sure exactly where it transports you - colonial French Vietnam maybe? - but it definitely transports you somewhere beautiful. On nice days, the outside seats are particularly amazing, with plenty of shade and the ultra chic elegance of the restaurant against the backdrop of South First.

A caveat here: I've been to Elizabeth Street Cafe many times, but it's always been for breakfast. It's when the days are the most mild, when the quiet simplicity of the place is most pronounced. I am sure that the vibe is no less interesting, the food no less delicious if you were to go in the evening, but that'll have to be a follow up for me.

For breakfast, Elizabeth rocks. I've been through the full set of breakfast Bahn Mi - combinations of crispy pork belly and fried eggs with avocado and mint; ginger sausage and scrambled eggs; egg white and chili. The baguette these are each served on is crusty and airy with a perfect bite. The presentation is perfect. Even better is the ginger sausage with poached eggs, sticky rice and touches of thinly sliced radishes and cilantro. The richness of the egg yolk connects to the subtle sweetness of the rice and is brightened by the ginger and radishes.

The coffee is Stumptown, and while the espresso drinks aren't really at the level they could be (the milk is frothed to dish soap bubble consistency), coffee in both American and Vietnamese styles is quite good. Pastries are made next door, and are a mystifying combination of absolute bliss and curious short cuts. This is nowhere more apparent than with the almond croissant. A million buttery layers and a perfect crisp, but sliced through the middle and infused with a sort of almond-extract butter. Not the most elegant approach.

These are small weak spots, and they give just enough humanity to Elizabeth Street to make it's slickness seem organic, just enough to make the entire experience of breakfast there one of the loveliest in town.

Koffee Kup Keeps it Real

Through a series of fortunate events, my wife Tracy and I recently got a morning free together in San Antonio. Though the Koffee Kup may not be a typical spot for a romantic interlude, it was just about perfect for our little getaway.

The Koffee Kup is far off the beaten path, in West San Antonio, about a 15 minute drive from downtown. It's a quirky little greek-columned storefront sandwiched between nondescript stores, in a mildly dingy stretch of 1970s stripmalls.

That said, after years of upscale and self-conciously ironic comfort food in Austin, it was a little bit of a relief to step foot in an actual functioning greasy spoon. The place is tiny - a small patio out back and maybe 10 tables in front, with a shockingly tiny open kitchen, and the register off to the side. The linoleum floors, the wood-pattern veneer tables, the simple wooden chairs, all standard issue diner basics, a little worn around the edges, but clean and cheery.

The Kup pulls away from the everyday almost immediately. Warm, friendly, smiling waitresses bustle everywhere - like you've been a once-a-day regular for years even though it's the first time you step through the door.

We ended up taking a table out on the patio under brightly colored umbrellas in the slight breeze of the morning. Over sips of drinkable coffee, we settled on splitting a Cowboy Breakfast - eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage - and waffles. It was an enormous amount of food. The sausage gravy was intensely fresh, peppery and lighter in texture and taste than the slop that passes for cream gravy most places. The biscuits, fresh out of the oven. The sausage had a nice bright flavor and easy crumble. The details across the board were impressive, from the frequent coffee refills to the perfect crisp of the waffle. Everything that the Koffee Kup made, they made very well. Low spots were the bits they didn't make themselves - the bacon wasn't particularly impressive and the syrup, as one would have expected, was the corn syrup goo that passes for maple most everywhere. Side note: seriously considering traveling with a flask of maple syrup to avoid this in the future.

It was a place that was extraordinary in it's ordinariness. There was no attempt to make anything not made a thousand other diners across the country, but every chance they had to make it well, the Koffee Kup delivered. Crowded, but without a wait, the Koffee Kup was full of happiness and pride - a place you can imagine had stood in that spot for generations (even though it just opened in 2009). Gems like this exist hidden in cities all over the country, I'm glad we managed to find this one.

Miles Above the Curve - Fork in the Road

Fork in the Road, or FitR, as they call themselves, approaches food in ways no other place in Lansing can touch. Locally grown produce, house-cured bacon, pasture-raised eggs, world-class coffee. These are details you just can't get anywhere else in these parts - at least not until you hit Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids.

The menu is small - mostly made up of comfort-food favorites, done up fancy and built by hand. They have tots, but they are not what you think they are. These are house-made, grated potato infused with sundried tomato, basil, garlic and a hickory smoked cheese - so while the presentation recalls tater tots, the taste is a million times bigger. The fried chicken is exceptionally tender, with interesting spikes of heat, tartness and sweetness from the drizzled sauces and honey. Grits are gorgeously textured and oozing with sharp cheese. The veggie tacos are a stunning balance of tartness from little sections of lime and tomatillo, earthiness from carmelized onion, substance from the fresh house-made flour tortillas, and creaminess from the queso fresco. This is a taco that would work anywhere - that would be a standout in Austin - to find it here is a happy moment indeed. Desserts (especially the pots de creme and the bread pudding) are great, and the coffee is on a different planet from the chains that dominate here. Serious eating opportunities.

Fried Berry Pie, Fried Chicken, Tater Tots, Bread Pudding

The menu also has a few duds - the chili is passable, but too sweet and bland; and the Ballin' Ass Tacos are a one-note drone compared to the orchestra of the veggie version - chorizo is very tough to get right, and in these tacos, it overwhelms everything around it, including the outstanding homemade tortillas.

The place itself is slowly transforming from a neglected storefront to an urban garden oasis, with a fantastic mural splayed across the wall, and tomato plants and herbs growing in every sqaure inch of available dirt. The interior is straight up diner - not modern diner, not fancy diner - just diner, but it's cozy and clean and a perfect backdrop for the surprising sophistication of the food.

Being this far above the local curve has it's pitfalls - it's easy to let things slide a bit when no one is a close second. A year into its life, FitR is not immune to occasionally dialing it in. I've visited when the pork shoulder was too dry, the grits a little underspiced, but I've never been in when it has been anything less than the most food-centric, sustainable, ambitious, creative cuisine for miles and miles in any direction.

Grilled Nectarine (with Pots de Creme), Trout, Tomato and Mural, Grits, More Tomato, Veggie Taco

Henri's Cheese, Wine (and Tables)

I actually thought Henri's existed before it opened. Last fall, my wife and I were taking care of some errands downtown, and we both had the same idea for lunch: a sandwich, but also something completely luscious. Good bread. Really good cheese. Maybe a glass of wine. At the time, I had heard a little bit about Antonelli's and it seemed like just the ticket. So we headed over to Hyde Park, expecting to find a little European bistro with a monumental selection of cheese. What we found was a knee-buckling, awe-inspiring nose-full of pure cheese love to be sure, but there were no tables. No sandwiches. Wine, but no glasses.

Turns out: our perfect little bistro hadn't been born yet. It has now. What we wanted that fall day was Henri's. Pristine and industrial chic, Henri's is built up with weathered wood, exposed stone, concrete and industrial fittings. Simple, multi-paned windows let in a flood of light, but low ceilings and dark woods lend it a cozy feel.





Food options are simple, delicious and limited. It's almost more of a curated collection of food than a restaurant. The wine selection is small, but fabulous. Blue Bottle Coffee is available in individual french press only. Cheeses are beautifully arrayed in a relatively small cooler in front, and they are stunning. The sandwiches are tempting, but I stayed with what looked to me like the core competency - a $10 cheese board - owner's choice. I mention the price for a reason - in an Austin increasingly full of ultra pricey food-centric opportunities I think this may be the best $10 lunch in town.

Everything on my plate - the almonds, the house-made peach mustard, the crusty french baguette - was fantastic; but the standout was the soft goat cheese - Haystack Mountain Snowdrop. Cheese on another scale altogether from almost anything I've had - right on the edge between the fresh bite of a fresh chevre and the sensous goo of a ripe brie. Magic cheese, this was.

It takes a certain amount of bravado to grab the location between Barley Swine and Lick, a certain amount of confidence that you can deliver something extraordinary. Henri's nails it.

Octane at Last. Great Coffee in the ATL.

Waiting three years for a chance to visit, my expectations for Octane were unreasonably high. Last week, after a heated argument with a very confused GPS, I managed to get myself to the newest outpost - in The Jane in the Grant Park neighborhood on the East side of Atlanta. It did not disappoint.

Like so many fantastic coffee places, Octane occupies a reclaimed industrial space with weathered beams, giant factory windows and enormously tall ceilings. All of this history leaves a patina that contrasts beautifully with the shining chrome and porcelain of the coffee gear. The space is shared - about a third belongs to the brilliant A Little Tart bakery, about a third to Octane's coffee operation, and about a third to a well-stocked full bar. Beer. Coffee. Cake. I could be happy here for days.

Coffee is roasted in house, thanks to a recent merger between Octane and Primavera coffee roasters. The outcome is amazing - on par with the coffee coming out of the very best places I've been - with a punchy, citrus-forward espresso, and a good selection of farm-specific pour-over coffees. Frankly, it's getting harder for coffee places to stand out on this basis alone. Everyone has their Strada dialed in. Everywhere has competition-level Baristas pouring gorgeous latte art with local milk. Everyone either scours the world for the perfect coffee bean or has a partnership with someone who does. What I was sipping wasn't the heart stopping moment of that first sip of Handsome Burundi or Cuvee Chachunda, but it was every bit as good as the best of everything else.

So where do you go when you're clearly the best coffee in your town, maybe the best in your State? You go to food. This, for me, was where Octane really shined. The combination with The Little Tart - a bakery focused on finely crafted, traditionally prepared, locally sourced sweets and savories - is nothing short of brilliant. This is where every other coffee place I've been falls short. There's just never a kitchen. Here, in this cavernous warehouse, there is space a plenty, and a subway-tiled commercial kitchen is hanging out behind the coffee churning out buckets of amazing.

I wasn't kidding when I said I could live here happily for a while. The almond cake was simple, fresh and moist, with a delicate crumb; the almond nuanced - an echo more than a flavor. The cakes you find nearly everywhere else - cakes stowed in a cooler, shlepped across town, pre-sliced - simply can not match this. This is what expert cake tastes like when it's born and it is as good a compliment to a rich cup of coffee as you're likely to find.

Octane is beyond a good coffee shop, it's a worth-scheduling-an-extra-long-ATL-layover-coffee-shop. It was worth every minute of the years I spent waiting to find it.

 

Erikson's Throwback, All American, Summertime, New England Ice Cream

My sister recently moved from one Boston suburb to another, landing in the sleepy former mill town of Maynard, MA.

Maynard is Norman-Rockwell-charming, all rosy red-brick storefronts populated by pizza places, neighborhood bars, and quaint, scrappy retail. And Erikson's. Erikson's is a mile or so from downtown - a pristine white creamery and ice cream stand smack dab in the middle of a pretty, but modest Victorian-era neighborhood.

This is All-American ice cream through and through, and has been for more than 75 years. Neighborhood families flock here day and night, and even though the gravel parking lot is stuffed with cars, half the people arrive on foot. Despite the crowds and the mind-boggling array of flavors and presentations, there's never much of a wait.7 separate lines and registers cover the building and there's a clock-work of teenage bustle inside. A scattering of picnic tables sit out back under the canopy of immense trees.



The ice cream is made in Erikson's creamery right next door. You want local? How's 15 feet? It's good ice cream - really good in some cases - but it's not the variety that will leave you speechless in ecstasy. Particularly loved the Strawberry, which despite a shock of color not found in nature tasted like it was mixed from farmer's market berries that morning. Vanilla was more sweet cream than vanilla bean, without a lot of zing. But you don't come here because of the killer hot fudge or the mountain of whipped cream on your sundae. You come here because the sun is setting on a long sunny day and there's a breeze rustling the leaves. You come here because the fireflies are out. You come here because it's still light after dinner and nobody's really paying that much attention to bed time. You come here because it's summer, and that's just how it's done.

Sightglass Coffee. Va Va Voom.

Sightglass is breathtakingly, heart-wrenchingly, staggeringly beautiful. 

I don't know if it's the side project of some infinitely wealthy dot com kid, or if they sell a bajillion dollars of coffee every day, but this is a cost-is-no-object shop. The ceiling soars 40 feet above the massive bar, criss-crossed with giant wooden beams. Enormous windows frame the front of the store and combine with expansive skylights to bathe the place in warm light. On the second floor there's what looks like a coffee tasting lab, a little steampunk and completely functional. There's taxidermied owls. There's a good size drum roaster. There are bags and bags of green coffee and roasted coffee, rows of tags on bakers twine, paper-bag brown bags and boxes. And it's not just that all these amazing details come together into a cohesive modern-rustic style - there's also a lot of open space - vast fields of hardwood floors on three levels, right there in the high-rent capital of the universe.

So, that's the first thing you notice when you walk in. Then you catch your breath, and set about ordering yourself some coffee. And mostly it's just about the coffee here. The pastries are delicious, but an afterthought - the teeny tiny pastry case is situated between the iPad/registers, easiest to peruse after you pay.

I ordered a macchiato - it was really good, but not perfect: the milk was not as smoothly textured as it could have been and while the coffee itself was lovely, it was not particularly complex. Ideally, you want a distinct start, middle and finish to the taste in a coffee. Sightglass coffee is good, but there's none of that tartness you get from some coffees on the first sip, none of the woodiness on the finish. Not bad, and certainly not unpleasant, but a little flat. I took home a bag of the Guatemala Cubito, tried several different brewing methods and found the same simplicity relative to what I've been tasting from Counter Culture, Cuvee and Handsome over the last few months. A lovely cup, to be sure, just not dazzling.

So - is Sightglass one of the best on the planet? In some ways, absolutely. I have a hard time imagining a sexier location for coffee. But in other ways, it doesn't reach the etherial, constant perfection you see from the very best places that do this. It's a relatively new entrant, and they are very very good. I don't doubt that they may well evolve into something mind-blowing, but for now, the big draw is the view.