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.

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.

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.

Fresa's - the Food Truck Without Wheels

Austin's food truck boom is the stuff of legend. Trucks sprout like weeds in vacant lots, surrounded at all hours by picnic tables, bicycles and mustachioed men in hats. In an effort to differentiate themselves in a crowded market, these places have taken on more and more ambitious cuisine. Lobster bisque, roasted tomato buffalo mozzarella caprese, and sous-vide pork belly all now come on wheels.

At the same time, Fresa's has been working the reverse angle. Fresa's, the newest outpost of the McGuire Moorman empire, is taking food that was born to be mobile - Mexico City style corn, chicken tortas, tortillas, agua fresca - and putting it inside a very solid building.

Fresa's is housed in the space formerly occupied by Emerald City Coffee Press on North Lamar between 9th and 10th. It's an awkward mid-century building, taller than it should be, with a massive overhang on one side, and a flat expanse of brick facade. Fresa's made it beautiful. A few raw wood accents, plenty of bright colors, beautiful typography, the best neon chicken sign in Austin; this place looks like it was born to be here. In truth, the lovely space is a mixed blessing, because as beautiful as it is, there's no way to spend any time there. A few stools work while you're waiting for your order at the counter, but that's it. No tables inside or out.

We opted for the closest picnic table we could think of, a quick drive away at 9th Street in Clarksville. It was a bit of an ordeal for lunch, but we were rewarded with very tasty goodies when we laid out the spread on the table. Tortas were a brilliant combination of creamy queso fresco, avocado, savory ancho-marinated pulled chicken and super fresh lettuce and tomato. Chips were well-seasoned, a little thicker than I would have liked, but were redeemed by a totally legit, slightly spicy, full on tex-mex queso. Corn was charred and slathered in mayo (sounds odd, I know), lime, salt and chili - a highlight for all of us. The horchata auga fresca was fragrant and lovely. In all, it was a formidable and tasty, if also pricey, lunch - well made, compellingly tasty, a solid step up from similar fare up the street at Zocalo.

I mention Zocalo for a reason there. Fresa's is an excellent place - no question about it - but it is so high-concept and so limited in what it does, that despite the better flavors at Fresa's, my next trip for some moderately healthy mexican-inspired goodness is likely to be Zocalo. I'd like a place to sit, something I can easily feed my kids, a couple more options on the menu. But that's just me - I'm hopeful that there are enough folks in Fresa's urban professional downtown-dwelling target market to make this place a success. I would hate to lose that neon chicken.

Special thanks to FairMorningBlue for help with the photos.

 

Lick Is King

Sometime over the last few years, someone doused the smoldering Austin food scene with gasoline. One after another, new places opened that set a new standard for long-stagnant categories. BBQ got upended by Franklin. Sweets got a new queen in Sugar Mamas. Uchi  lapped every other Sushi joint in the state. Medici made us forget that anyone else ever poured a latte. And now: Ice Cream. Lick simply eclipses anything else you can get in a cone.

I know this will rankle. I know that there are ice cream loyalties in this town that run deep. Please don't egg my car. I'm just calling it like I see it.

Lick is nestled in a compact storefront right next to Henri's and Barley Swine. This is a legit parking lot. A few benches out front and a couple of stools in a corner inside are the extent of the formal seating, but people make do - backs against posts, sitting on curbs, leaning on their single-speed bikes. Inside, the tiny space is pretty, but sparse, dominated by about 15 feet of ice cream under glass and a monumental, bright red, um, tongue, I think. Flavors are listed on large-size note cards tacked up on the bulletin board.

And that's where things get interesting. Grapefruit Ginger. Hill Country Honey Vanilla Bean. Strawberry Basil. Cilantro Lime. Beets and Mint. Salted Caramel. It's not Iron-Chef-Octopus-Eyeball-Ice-Cream-Weird, but it's also not a menu board you're going to mistake for Baskin Robbins. Dealing with savory elements is a tricky business, and Lick manages it beautifully, nearly all the time. The Grapefruit Ginger is pure summer - juicy, with a little pucker of sour flavor hidden inside folds of cream and sweet. The caramel and chocolate are the most intense of either flavor I've ever tasted in an ice cream. Chocolate ice cream usually comes with a chalky, powdery edge - I avoid it whenever possible. But here, the chocolate tastes like a cold, creamy ganache - elegant and pristine.

It's brilliant, but it's not perfect. There are creamier ice creams, and the scoops set about melting more quickly than others. Occasionally, as the flavors of the generally-local ingredients shift, the flavors in the ice creams shift as well. I've had strawberry basil so good it made my toes curl, and I've had the same ice cream where the basil was too forward, leaving the strawberry as an afterthought. It's the reality of pushing limits though, and the reality of working with powerful, flavorful, real, ingredients. A little inconsistency is OK by me.

Lick is the Franklin, the Sugar Mamas, the Uchi, the Medici of Ice Cream. It changes the dessert landscape in this town. Thanks for showing up, Lick, we've been waiting for you.

Simple Pleasures: Blue Dahlia

Blue Dahlia exudes charm, from the battered wooden sign on the sidewalk out front to the enclosed arbor patio at the back. An early entrant into the East 6th renaissance, Blue Dahlia has built a compelling mix of simple, French-inspired dishes, heavily reliant on seasonal local produce. A second location is set to launch in Westlake on June 8, 2012 (just a few days from now) and I think the approach that keeps it so packed on the East Side will work well on the West Side, too.

The small indoor space is dominated by two massive community tables made from giant polished slabs of warm, gnarled wood. Smaller tables are fit close together, and a long counter supports shelves covered in loaves of fresh bread. It's a tight squeeze, but thanks to the focused, attentive, and generally fabulous staff it never feels chaotic; more well-managed bustle.

The menu is varied, with a handful items loosely bucketed into breakfast items, beautiful open faced sandwiches, salads, and a sweet selection of inexpensive dinner entrees.

Everything's good, but the basic rule for me so far: the less ambitious the dish, the more fantastic it is. It's not that these folks don't turn out pretty impressive stuff - it's just that the most inspired flavor comes from the core elements they work with. As an example - the tomato gazpacho, basically a coursely chopped mix of a Johnson's Backyard Garden basket is far more impressive than the cream-based white gazpacho, a more finessed mix of cream and cucumbers that doesn't really come together.

Likewise for the entrees - where Blue Dahlia lets the vegetables speak for themselves, it's a thing of beauty - the ratatouille is tangy and deeply satisfying, but the bed of Israeli cous cous and mixed greens, and the shaved Parmesan on top felt like afterthoughts. In the case of the greens, a pretty distant afterthought - lovely little sprigs of baby romaine wilted into squish against the heat of the vegetables. I would have been happier eating that ratutouille in a simple bowl with a chunk of crusty french bread to mop up the amazing flavor.

The tartines I've tried have been more consistent - goat cheese and tapenande is simple and on point, served on a rustic slate board on slightly spongy, wonderfully dense whole wheat bread with a bright shock of roasted red pepper. The combination of astringent and creamy in that sandwich is brilliant, as it is in the savory chicken salad.

Blue Dahlia is many things. It is beautiful. It is welcoming. It is phenomenally well staffed. Food here is made with love, and made with some of the best ingredients I've seen in a town stuffed with farm-to-market eateries. But for all that I love about Blue Dahlia, it's not a place where food is deeply transformed - there's nothing fussy, nothing genius about it. It's a place to go to enjoy a glass of wine and a slate of artisanal cheese, on a patio that is bearable even in the heat, exactly the breezy neighborhood restaurant you wish would open up down the street from you.

A Houndstooth Cupping

A month or so ago, out of the blue, I got an email from Jodi Bart asking if I wanted to partner up with Houndstooth to host a coffee cupping for Austin Food Blogger Alliance members. It was difficult to respond with appropriate decorum. Did I want to take Cindy Crawford to my middle school prom? HELL YES I WANT TO PARTNER UP WITH HOUNDSTOOTH FOR A CUPPING EVENT.

So I did. And it was unreasonably, awesomely, fantastically, fun.

Sunday night at 6:00, about 20 of us filtered in and took seats around the shop, scanning the room, trying to connect actual faces to twitter profile pics and profile pics to blogs. On the counter, there were apples; as Sean's brother Paul ground coffee for the cupping, we tasted them. At first, they tasted like... apples. And when we tried to describe the tastes to each other, a lot of us found ourselves coming up blank, going back for second tries. Soon, we started to isolate textures, and sweetness, and citrus flavors, and the bitterness of peel. And then we were ready.

The first step in the cupping is fragrance. This is the part where you stick your nose into a juice glass with a couple of tablespoons of fresh ground coffee at the bottom and inhale. It was a little embarrassing to be in public with one's nose quite so deep in a glass, but it was all so intoxicating that I stopped caring by the time I got to the Burundi. There were blueberry and cherry scents, notes of balsa wood, pepper, chili, almonds. And the fragrance shifted, as the coffee sat, even over a few minutes.



We compared notes, and then shifted from fragrance, when the beans were dry, to the more difficult task of aroma, which is what a coffee smells like when it's wet. It's much harder to get a sense for the aromas here, so there's a whole process of "breaking the crust" when going in for the aroma notes, involving a back and forth and book swish of a spoon after the hot water was poured over the grounds. Sean sort of nailed it on this one when he said mostly it'll just smell hot.

At this point, we were all revved up and ready to get tasting, and Sean gave us a good demo there too. To taste, you slurp. Full on, snooty wine style, slurp. It makes a floppy wet sound sound, kind of like an air zerbert. I no longer felt like the fragrance was the embarrassing part of the event. But the reward for the slurp was the tastes that came flooding in from these coffees. The Mad Cap Gishamwana Rwanda started with flash of sharp almost lemon flavor and the sunk into a silky resonating chocolate. The Gatare Burundi, from Handsome in LA, had a smoother flavor, woody and full bodied, without more subtle changes from start to middle to end. We got almonds from the Finca Nueva Armenia Guatemala, butter from the El Gavilan Ecuador, and a big fat blueberry pie from the Peru all from Counter Culture. Standing around each coffee in little clusters, we'd slurp and compare notes - someone said wood, and someone else said wet wood, and someone else connected that with popsicle stick, and as subjective as this process is, a description resonated, and we could all taste it.

Popular vote was a close run between the Burundi and the Rawanda, but the Rawanda eeked out the victory (sorry Maggie), and Paul set about brewing us all cups of it using a few of the shop's Clevers. We sipped, and sighed, and caught up with each other a bit before packing up our cameras and note pads and heading back out into the warm night and home.

We are novices - most of us anyway - and we have a lot more to learn. We focused on 3 of the dimensions in a real cupping - fragrance, aroma, and flavor. There's acidity to consider next time, and body, aftertaste, and balance. And the entire SCAA flavor wheel to master. So thank you once again Sean and Houndstooth for having us, and Jodi, who I think is now officially my coffee addiction enabler. Can't wait until next time.

Looking for more cupping action? Mike Galante and Farmstress Maggie, a couple of my AFBA compatriots already have posts on the event up as well:
http://blog.mikegalante.com/2012/houndstooth-hosts-the-afba/
http://frommaggiesfarm.blogspot.com/2012/05/coffee-cupping-at-houndstooth-austin.html

Head to Head: MightyFine vs P. Terry's

Austin has never suffered for want of burgers and fries. We've had Dirty Martin's since 1926, and places like Dan's, Sandy's and Top Notch followed, serving up mega-greasy, super delicious burgers of unknown provenance.

Now there's a new crop - led by P. Terry's and Mighty Fine - that have taken the I-know-the-guy-that-grew-that-tomato ethos and applied it to the formula that worked so well for the classic burger joints. Tiny menu, cooked to order, fresh made everything.

I can't afford the calories for a full run down of the Austin Burger scene, and I don't want to invite the hate mail that would come from comparing the new guys to classics. But I do have the completely subjective data to support a head-to-head throwdown for the new big dogs in town: P. Terry's and Mighty Fine.

The Place

P Terry's Wm Cannon Location

Mighty Fine is run by the same folks that run Rudy's, and it shows. Mighty Fine is just this side of a warehouse on ambiance. Folding metal chairs line long tables with plastic red-check table cloths. Oddly, it works. Though it's bare-bones, there's something appealing about the function before form approach.

P Terry's couldn't more different. Each of their locations shares an early-60's modern vibe, underscored by exposed wood, clean lines, and high-style architecture. While some details fall through the cracks (the sign on the trash at the Arbor Trails location is in Comic Sans, standing out like a half-empty can of bud light floating in an infinity edge pool) - the place in general holds together beautifully.

Advantage: P. Terry's.

The Burger

Mighty Fine Junior Cheeseburger Yeller

I have eaten many a Mighty Fine burger and each is identical, down to the orientation of the bacon and the size of the tomato slice. They are also delicious. The burger itself is thick and fresh, simply spiced, and each topping they do is right on the money - especially the crisp bacon. I like the Junior size best - the full burger is a lot to handle.

P Terry's Cheeseburger

P Terry's burger? Not so much. While the toppings are great (especially the tomatoes), the meat is thin and cooked to a well-done char. Together with the sometimes compressed spongy bread, there's just not a lot of burger to this burger. In the immortal words of that old lady from my childhood: "Where's the beef"

Advantage: Mighty Fine

The Fries

Mighty Fine Fries

Mighty Fine has the best crinkle cut fries I've ever had. This is not saying much, since most crinkle cut fries come from a a freezer bag and taste like frost bite. These are cut fresh, and they're not bad at all. My main complaint is the crisp - cooked to beautiful color and well salted, they're just a little floppier than I like to see in a fry.

P. Terry's fries are better on good days and worse on bad days. More conventionally cut, these are thin little bundles of joy when they're hot that lose their charm quickly as they cool down. Still, good stuff on both counts.

Advantage: Mighty Fine

The Winner: Mighty Fine. P Terry's has a lot going for it, but you can't eat a pretty little mid-century knock off chair. For the stuff you can eat, fries, burgers, even shakes, it's a clear victory for Mighty Fine.

That said, both have place at the table, and I am happy they both exist. I like that cheap fast food is made with attention to detail and serious consideration of where it's from and how it's raised. And I like that our local places, even in this little wisp of a niche market, still knock the socks off of the national competition.

Mighty Fine:        |      P Terry's:

The Best Coffee in Austin

Tackling the Coffee category for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance City Guide is harder in 2012 than it would have been a few years back. From a complete coffee wasteland in the 90s, Austin has emerged as the coffee epicenter of the central time zone. Cuvee is roasting world class coffee (powering 4 out of the 38 national finalists at last year's US Barista championships). New shops are popping up nearly every month, becoming the centers of neighborhood life and changing the landscape of Austin for the better. Talented baristas are branching out into new ventures and breathing life into forgotten enterprises. I've highlighted five of the very best spots for coffee in town - each of which has raised the bar in it's own way - and another dozen or so that are worth a visit.

The Best Coffee Shops in Austin:

Caffe Medici
Caffee Medici was founded in 2006, turning a little house in Clarksville into a new kind of coffee shop for Austin. Latte art. French press. Perfect ceramic cups. It was packed with customers from the get-go. Now open in 3 locations, Medici is still, as far as I'm concerned, the best in town. The slightly tart Cuvee Espresso Medici blend is a stunning espresso, and with milk, it takes on an almost toasted-marshmallow decadence. They've expanded to three locations - the original in Clarksville, warm and neighborly; the drag, where students spill out onto the wide front patio; and downtown in the Austonian, a sleek, two story temple to coffee that left me completely speechless. Medici matches the best the Northwest has to offer, and manages to outdo itself at every turn.

1101 West Lynn Street, Austin, TX | 2222 Guadalupe Street, Austin, TX | 200 Congress Ave #2b, Austin, TX

Houndstooth
You need to be pretty awesome to hold your own in a strip mall anchored by Uchiko, and Houndstooth does not disappoint. Unlike Medici, which, with only a few exceptions, brews Cuvee exclusively, Houndstooth intersperses Cuvee with a rotating mix of coffee from the best roasters nationally. Today, it's Counter Culture, Verve, and Handsome. This isn't an accident: Houndstooth is built around coffee and around the baristas that bring that coffee to life in the cup. There's an infectious excitement here - when Houndstooth discovers a spectacular new roaster, they can't wait to share it, can't wait to get it dialed in. You can feel the buzz when you walk in the shop - sparse but comfortable on the customer side, and positively gleaming on the barista side of the bar, including a 3-group Mistral - the most spectacular espresso machine operating in these parts.

4200 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX

Once Over Coffee
Founded in 2009 as the second coffee venture for Rob and Jenée Ovitt, Once Over encapsulates the Austin vibe better than any other shop in town. It's a hole in the wall, off South First street - warm, with an absolute gem of a hidden back deck, and a low-budget-chandeliers-and-mismatched-chairs charm. The slacker ethos does not, however, extend to the coffee. Once Over developed their espresso blend - Dead Fingers - in partnership with Cuvee. Not as bright as Thunderbird's or Medici's blends, Dead Fingers is deep and almost chocolaty, my favorite straight shot in town. On a nice day, there's no better place to kick back, listen to the creek gurgle by, and sip some seriously decadent coffee.

2009 South 1st Street  Austin, TX

Frank
Technically, Frank is a hot dog place. And a live music venue. And a bar. This makes what they do with coffee all that much more miraculous. When they launched in the little brick building at 4th and Colorado, they set the bar for artisan sausage (and real Chicago Dogs) in Austin, and also quietly upped the coffee ante downtown. They've moved from Chicago power-house roaster Intelligentsia to LA upstart Handsome Coffee Roasters in the last few months, but the coffee is no less spectacular. If you want the best damn sausage you have ever tasted with your latte, this is pretty much your ticket.

407 Colorado Street, Austin, TX

Thunderbird
Thunderbird started small - as a neighborhood shop out on Koenig - and has grown into a major player, adopting new innovations, serving kick-ass beer, opening up on the East Side. Thunderbird is one of the only places in town that you can get the kind of single-cup brewing that is becoming the standard at the best coffee places on the coasts - from 10 to 1 on Saturdays and Sundays at their original location, you can get coffee ground for the cup and brewed on the spot as a Hario V60 pour over, Chemex, or Siphon. This is the same menu of options I ran into last year at Public Domain in Portland, and last week at Intelligentsia in Chicago. If you're hankering for a beautiful cup of coffee on the weekend, you are unlikely to do better than this.

1401 West Koenig Lane, Austin, TX | 2200 Manor Road, Austin, TX

The Honorable Mentions:

JP's - for starting this ball rolling
JP's, founded in 2002,  was once far and away the best thing going in town. That luster has faded a bit as others have risen around them, but they are still doing amazing things. If you're down by campus, it's a a lovely little dive of a place, and the dark-roast Zoka beans yield a rich and earthy espresso.

Teo - for the best coffee you will ever find alongside a gelato
You can't get much less local on coffee than you get at Teo, where they have been pulling shots of Italian I Magnifici 10 for more than 8 years. It's a smooth, velvety espresso, and a perfect foil to the sweetness of the house-made gelato. The entire experience is as immersively Italian as anywhere in Austin, in a very good way.

Progress - for bringing coffee to the East Side
Progress coffee was one of the first shops to open on the East Side of town - an anchor of the current boom running through the East 6th - East 11th areas. The coffee, roasted by small-time local shop Owl Tree, is woody and fresh, but Progress is not all about coffee perfection. Progress is about kicking back with Austin's mustachioed single-speed set, watching the trains roll by, and taking in Austin from a different angle.

Jo's - for completing the SoCo Experience
The coolest place to stay in Austin is the Hotel San Jose. And the coolest place to grab a cup of coffee when you roll yourself out of bed at noon and head out into the heat of another Austin day, is across the parking lot at Jo's. Jo's is more of a shack than a shop, but they are an Austin institution, with good local grub, and pretty fantastic coffee - also from Owl Tree.

Interested in some social justice with your coffee? Check out old-timer Ruta Maya or upstart Dominican Joe, both of whom put special focus on fairly sourced American beans.

Looking for something on wheels? check out dynamite trailer Patika coffee, one of the best mobile coffee vendors anywhere. Other trailers are doing good things all over town, from Elixer up at Mueller to Lance Armstrong's roving Juan Pelota coffee truck - check out Tiffany's massive round up over at Trailer Food Diaries for up to the minute details on what's rolling through town now.

If you're looking for a zing to go, stop by Whole Foods or Wheatsville and check out locally brewed Chameleon Cold Brew for an exceptionally smooth, exceptionally caffeinated kick in a bottle. Chameleon is the brain-child of local foodie-entreprenuer Chris Campbell and excellent 24-hour east side standby coffee shop Bennu.

And, if you haven't already gathered from the posts above, if you need some beans for home you can't do any better than Cuvee (available freshest, and in the greatest variety, at Medici).

If you're in Austin there's no excuse for a bad margarita. No excuse for sub-par BBQ. No reason to get anything but the perfect Breakfast Taco. And now - there's no reason to get anything other than a spectacular cup of joe.

Got another favorite? I'd love to hear about it - drop me a line in the comments.


| | | |