What this town needs is a good sixty cent cup of coffee

If I were handed a TrickyDick $300 FunBill, I would go out and try to drink 100 cups of coffee. I would fail. I would fail because, in this life, $3 coffee means the cheapest, grimiest coffee, doesn’t it? It means you spent three bucks at a gas station. It means you wasted three bucks on coffee that you won’t get around to choking down. If you have three hundred dollars and want to drink one hundred cups of coffee, your option is to make it yourself.
But not really. The fact is, there exists in Austin, a cup of coffee that runs you under a buck. I mean to find as many as I can. I mean to obtain them. I mean to try them.

Part 1: Cheating On a Halo, Also, on a Challenge

The Wells Branch Community Library

For my first trick, I shall need a volunteer from the Library. I shall need him (or her!) to go to the Wells Branch Community Library just off Wells Port Drive and obtain the first of my Cheap Coffee Cuest objects.

Library Coffee might not count. It costs exactly a dollar, though, which is what makes it my choice for first cup. They don’t actually make it there, per se. It comes from a machine. You put a little pouch bag into the device and it presses water through it, and piddles into the cup.

The library’s nice, though. I vote  that it’s the nicest library on or very near Wells Port Drive.

Take that, Pflugerville Library!

Next time: Coffee that comes from a food purveyor and costs less than a dollar. Excitement!

Garden Variety

Click: East Side Cafe of Austin

It is a common enough poetic conceit that the dog dreaming on the hearth sees himself a wolf, that the prowling housecat dreams tiger dreams, that even we common mortals of clay dream ourselves soaring as angels.  If restaurants are able to dream, and if they ever closed to catch a nap, then, all the little Kerby Lanes surely dream of being the East Side Cafe.

Despite being located in the same funereal neighborhood as Hoover’s  — directly across the street from it, in fact — the East Side Cafe succeeds in drawing the visitor into its own milieu right from the parking lot, where one steps out between the restaurant itself and the associated cute little garden shop, with a view across at the celebrated garden itself and a yard full of chickens.

The interior of the restaurant is entirely residential in appearance, a collection of small cozy dining rooms lined with bookshelves and, in the room where we sat, a brick fireplace supporting the daily special chalkboards.  The menus display photographs on the front covers of the latest new additions or recent produce in the actual garden outside, proud as parents showing off pictures of their progeny.

And as with new parents, it is impossible for a sentient being to stay in the presence of East Side Cafe without being reminded, several times through various media, that their menu revolves around the fresh output of their actual garden outside, and it may be tempting for a minute or two to find this pride of produce a bit pretentious — but then the food arrives and justifies it entirely, even perhaps makes it seem humble.

It is, in short, damn good food.

But ‘in short’ is hardly our stock in trade here at the Bisque, so to elaborate: we began with an appetizer of Baked Brie with Apple Chutney, a generous wedge of gooey cheese more than adequate for two, the chutney an ideal complement, and violating the laws of physics that usually seem to govern this sort of dish, it arrived with exactly the right number of toasted bagel chips to actually match the amount of cheese.

James’ Dad had the Plat d’Crudities, a large platter of rabbit food, while I opted for a couple of dishes featuring combinations I would never have thought of:  Smoked Salmon Ravioli with a side of Chipotle Pecan Soup.  The soup, unlike many chipotle-based food items to be found in Texas, focused more on the smoky flavor of the peppers than on searing the tongue with capsacin, with a thick pureed texture suitable to a pasta sauce as much as a dish in itself.

The ravioli were roughly the size of hubcaps, and the sauce so finely tuned to complement the smoked salmon as to avoid entirely the moment of deep unease I usually hit midway through any cream-sauced seafood dish, when the stomach suddenly realizes that it is loading up on both milk and fish at the same time, even as the tongue is insisting that the rest of the serving will be joining it soon.

And afterwards, there was that which my cohort would weep should I omit to mention, to wit pie.  Lime Pie in my case, and oh me, oh my.  It tasted exactly like I always hope a Key-lime pie will but they so rarely do, a miraculous contradiction, simultaneously cheesecake-rich and sherbet-light.  The charm of the dish was only enhanced by the use of actual cream, whipped, rather than the fluffy white emulsion sprayed from a can, and the garnish of two small pink flowers which I hope were intended as edible, since I ate one.

Charm, authenticity, amazing food and — indeed — prompt refills on the hibiscus-mint iced tea: we need to start visiting some more notably mediocre or even bad eateries, or my ratings of five humorously chosen items out of five will stop having any meaning.

But there it is anyway: five garden-fresh radishes out of five, and only a passing warning that the prices certainly reflect the establishment’s awareness of its own value.

Moonshine Patio Bar & Grill

So Texas You’ll Plotz

Click: Moonshine

Moonshine Bar & Grill is an intensely pleasant place; the interior having a homey atmosphere in the sense of resembling an actual home which happens to consist entirely of dining room, the patio spacious and airy.  There is a definite feel of special occasion about the place, of which J’s D. could tell you better than I whether it wears out with repeat visits.

We had with us a guest to whom I had not been introduced, but whose presence has already become known in some of The Dad’s reviews, that being a cell-phone sized camera with capacities that would have exploded my head back in the day, which is to say this entire paragraph has been spent on ‘this review has pictures’.

Here is one, of the Moonshine’s simple yet delight-filled menu:

The popcorn offers a deceptively light opening.

Note the important presence of popcorn on the table, which is brought free.  It has a light dusting of some sort of peppery spice and what appears to be real butter, and even as a blatant effort to entice one toward ordering more drinks, it’s a nice touch, just the thing to nibble while considering your order.

Since the menu is only partially readable in the picture, yet I’m about to discuss it as though you know what I’m talking about, here’s a link to the website’s copy.

For my personal tastes, this menu has one of the highest percentages I’ve ever seen of things I’d actually order, so deciding between them was a bit difficult, but on the other hand, a random dart-board method would work in a pinch. We started with an appetizer of Beer Batter Asparagus:

The dipping sauce is house buttermilk ranch, pink with paprika. It is delicious, and heavy.

Perhaps inevitably, including one that was, as Terry Pratchett would say, humorously shaped.  The asparagus was delicious, and cooked to just the right degree to be toothsome without being mushy, which can’t be all that easy to combine with the tempura-style preparation.  The beer battering, however, provided a note which would soon become a theme:  the simple fact is good asparagus in batter is a bit of a gilded lily, that is, the batter did not do much to enhance the asparagus, but did make it a somewhat heavier dish, the full significance of which will become apparent.

Following that, I made a random stab at the entree list and came up with the Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Charred Pineapple & Green Chile Salsa, and a side of Baked Macaroni,

The pork tenderloin. Note the salsa, and the brown sauce which is not very visible here. They are heavy.

while James’ Dad had the Horseradish Crusted Salmon with Lemon Dill Sauce and rather than a side, opted for a double helpin’ of vegetables, on account of he has a small computer telling him how may calories he may eat in a day.

And the salmon. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the lemon dill sauce is heavy.

At this point I want to reiterate that the food is excellent, the service friendly and prompt (by my only particular metric, which is that I didn’t have to wait for tea refills), and the atmosphere intangibly celebratory; because for both humorous and rhetorical value this review is inevitably going to dwell on the single substantial quibble — which is, itself, a quality hard to truly complain about in a restaurant.

I use the word ‘substantially’ quite deliberately here; to put it simply, Moonshine is not a place to go if you aren’t serious about eating, unless perhaps you intend rather to sit down and get serious about drinking.  The sauces are heavy, the vegetables are heavy with butter, the baked macaroni, for all that it comes in a small cup, is deliriously heavy with cheese, the asparagus is batter fried.

And the desserts…

The Fudge Stout Brownie with Malt Ball Ice Cream, as seen by a tiny person standing on the table.

…weigh five hundred pounds apiece.

The Peanut Butter Mousse Pie with Oreo Cookie Crust, imported exclusively from Brobdignag.

Neither of your humble reviewers were able to finish these chocolate masterpieces, which is not a statement lightly taken.  To be fair, the desserts are explicitly advertised as sized for sharing — indeed, the server warned Dr. Dad away from the Signature Skillet Apple Pie, as the serving is not a slice, but a pie (I also have to admire the sly tactic of slipping a combination dessert menu/comment card onto the table prior to bringing the check).  They might do well to consider making smaller portions for people who are explicitly ordering for one.

But again, it’s hard to fault a restaurant for being too filling.  It’s just not exactly a place for snackers or dieters; there are salads on the menu, but I’m willing to bet that the dressing is applied heavily, and it’s worth noting that one of the salads contains steak while another contains fried chicken.  The sinister part is simply that this very filling fare will tempt you powerfully to indulge enough to spend a long time semidormant afterward.

So come hungry, leave having not quite finished a dessert.

Five Lone Stars and a shot of white lightning in a Ball jar.

Moonshine

Porch and Pie

linq: Moonshine Grill

There is a heaviness to Moonshine Grill. I have dined here several times, and this revelation has only been driven home on this, my last visit.

I should elaborate. I have eaten at Moonshine grill several times in the last three years, since I first learned of their being nearby to my workplace. I have worked my way slowly around the menu, hitting the highest points as they occurred to me, and enjoying much of what I ate. The health and correctness of my diet, I should also add, was the furthest thing from my mind.

Lately, I am back on the program, watching my intake and working toward something resembling health. This has made me conscious of my intake in a way I had not previously been. I consider the foods I eat, and I consider more the foods I avoid.

There is a heaviness to the food at Moonshine. It is never unpleasant, and it does not ruin the focus of any particular dish, but it is present in every bite of every dish. I shall avoid duplicating Jack Hare’s main thrust by avoiding any specific mention, and instead take a jab toward the interior.

The Porch

The place is unremittingly nice.

The staff are pleasant and present, and the interior is well constructed to leave you in

anxiety.

Not really, but Hi, Dad.

The porch is a blessedly cool oasis in the heat of the pavement of downtown. The rustic indoors stands in stark contrast to the ultra-modern cubes that comprise the architecture of downtown Austin. The building suggests age without the fragility which so often accompanies it.

Going is always a good time. The food is tasty. The waitstaff is busy but courteous, which is often the sign of a good restaurant, much like high turnover in a fish monger. These are, I fear, the sum of my current impressions of the place, wrapped as I was in the warm haze of having eaten a little too much food that was an uninterrupted collection of a little too rich.

There exists pie at the place. I feel I have built up the requirement in myself to mention it. The peanut-butter pie is kind of cheating, as it is really a sort of mousse cheesecake. The server refused to bring an apple pie, as she informed us fearfully that it was not for a single diner, or even for a pair.

“It’s a whole pie,” she said. “It’s really, really too big.”

We made other selections.

“Good,” she said, “I wouldn’t bring that unless there were” she trailed off, indistinct, perhaps still calculating the size of heard she would require to make the titanic pie worthwhile.

When she brought the desserts, her arms bulging under the weight, I was left poleaxed. If these monstrosities are A-OK, the idea of what must actually be the Gargantuan Abomination which is the Apple Pie must dwarf even the very mountains.

The point is, I can’t really speak to the Apple pie. I haven’t tried it. It might be fine, though.

Six out of four, twice over, with whipped cream, a side of olives, or your choice of side

Red River Cafe

Stop a while and enjoy an egg

linq:Red River Cafe’s Facebook

I am not, by my nature, a morning person. I have recently acquired a “baby,” the 2009 model, which asserts that I am now to become one.  I certainly do not mind, but I do miss my status as a frequent patron of night spots. Solace, though, exists, in the form of several really excellent morning spots. I shall endeavor to speak on the subject of them.

My first experience with Red River Cafe was, as seems appropriate now, years and years ago. I was lost, the place isn’t on Red River Street, and the booths are a little small for my girthy taste. Whether my business that day was fell or not, I have attached dire overtones to it, although the details remain sketchy. I was young, and did not yet understand that this is almost the textbook definition of charm.

The corner table I chose today, for I remain a man of size, and the booths still run a little small.

I have, in my life, always had difficulty identifying charm, usually until the opportunity is so far gone as to make the point completely moot. I have been lucky to be allowed by the universe to take a moment and appreciate the really great place that is the Red River Cafe.

If it will be of any benefit to you, please, allow me to give you what pointers my massive ego and scant wisdom will allow.

Red River Cafe is not a place to go when you just want to grab a quick burger and run. Because the staff is composed of nice people and because the chef is willing, they will indulge you in this desire, but you will be missing the point. It is not a place to go get your breakfast burrito fix and dash to class, although they make a fine pair of burritos, and you do have class in, like, six minutes. This, too, is not the way to enjoy the place.

Budget your time. Allow a solid hour. Sit at a table and read your Chronicle or Statesman or Times or Post or Tribune or Journal or whichever other of the Old Form Papers still exist in this digital age, or if you must, your online datastreaming whatever thingummy, in the morning, and savor your eggs, in all their glorious splendor, or your burger or your pancakes or your taco. Order by placing a blind finger at random on the menu, and rest assured, you will receive food and you will be allowed to observe the cadence of the morning. Sit at your skinny booth and watch the light move across the counter. Drink your coffee and ask for refills. Do not be in a hurry.

Inside the café, taken with pure, uncut leisure

Hurrying your Red River Cafe experience is like telling your grandma you want that goddamn lace tatted right now, or it’s her ass.

Sure, you could, and you’d probably get what you asked for quickly, and because everybody around here is nice, nobody will give you the poke in the snout you deserve, but why do it? Take your time. You don’t often get an opportunity to really enjoy a thing as pedestrian and indulgent as breakfast, nor as simple and transcendent as a place that is well-loved by its clientele. Go ahead. I won’t tell your sharkskin classmates.

Five minutes to twelve

The Preferment as a Game Changer in Breadmaking

I don’t know if you are a breadmaker. I thought I was. I used to make bread, I suppose. It was fine.

I put in flour and water and eggs and oil and bloomed yeast and salt and spices, and kneaded and mixed and formed and proofed and baked, and the finished product was OK. It was bread.

That’s the problem with bread, really. It touches a place in our shared biological vocabulary. It speaks to comfort and wholesomeness, and it reminds us of home, even if we came from a generation of TV dinners and gin.

But that recipe up there, that isn’t bread. Bread has four ingredients, and they are really enough. Flour, salt, water and yeast. Which is kind of like saying, cars are just steel, rubber and a computer thing. Sure, it’s true, but the way you slap them together makes all the difference in the world.

Today, I shall address what little I have learned about the world of the preferment.

Under my older method, I did a thing called “blooming” my yeast, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary. I would put the yeast in the water, often with a little sugar or flour, and let it come to life, bubbling and roiling, usually until it burned out and died. I used far too much yeast, and the product I produced was uneven, although edible.

If you take that concept of the “bloom” and simplify it, then take it out to its extreme, you get a preferment. This will often produce a substance called Poolish or biga. I am sure that there is a difference, but I am still unschooled in its nature.

Part one:

Combine one quarter teaspoon of active dry yeast with one pound of water. “Disburse” the yeast into the water. Add one pound of flour. Now, the hard part is done. You should wind up with something which could be mistaken for dough, but is not dough. It is, in fact, a bland, yellowish mixture that, if baked, will produce something kind of gross. Cover this sticky slurry with plastic wrap, and place in a cool, out-of-the-way corner.

Now, wait 12 to 16 hours.

You heard me. Let that sit, unrefrigerated, for 12 to 16 hours. Won’t it get nasty? A little, yeah, but it’s covered, and you didn’t put any fat in it, so it should be safe. You’ll know it’s ready, because it will bubble crazily, and rise into a dome. Once the dome falls, the preferment is too far gone. It’s still usable, but it will produce an odd, beery product. This isn’t always bad, but it’s not the best, either.

What does this do, this sort of souring of the dough? There are two really great effects to be had. It will produce flavors you don’t get with quicker breads. It approaches, but does not equal, the cool weirdness available from actually taking a pet sourdough starter and using it to make breads.

The time spent fermenting produces gluten. I was formerly of the opinion that gluten was formed only when bread was whumped sharply by hand or mixer, that it was entirely the product of violent action. I feel that this misconception is relatively common among young breadmakers. It is not so. Time and yeast will produce, frankly, more gluten than you can use. At the end of the fermentation process, the flour-water slurry will have taken on the consistence of old clothes or spiderwebs. It will send tendrils up when you raise the plastic wrap from the bowl. It will be very much pre-bread. It will still taste like paste, because you haven’t added any salt yet.

That can be easily remedied.

Part two:

One more pound of flour, about a tablespoon and a half of yeast, half an ounce of salt and another 7 ounces of water later, and you’re ready to mix and add your poolish. I find that this is a good chance to pull the stuff apart and really play with it a little, but I am fascinated with that kind of thing. Either way, incorporate your previous stuff with your current stuff. This is a good moment to take note: If, when you remove your poolish from its bowl, you are greeted with the distinct smell of beer, you left it a little longer. If you are confronted with library paste, you either didn’t leave it long enough, or maybe let it get too cold and should have let it grow a little longer. It’s an art, more than a science, but you want to get the stuff to the point that it will be tasty and stringy, but not too tasty or stringy.

The nice thing about this, though, is that your final dough will cover a surprising amount of beery flavor, so don’t panic too hard. You’ll be cooking this. Unless it’s started to grow Things Not Like Bread, you’re probably OK. Remember: if it is green, it is not edible. I’m sorry that doesn’t rhyme, but it is a good thing to remember. Also, if it’s white and fuzzy, it’s gross. And scuzzy? Is that better? Either way, you’ll probably notice if your preferment has gone too long.

Now, you’ve got a slightly sticky mess. Cover this bowl with plastic again, and put it in a cool place for, yes, another six hours. Four to six, I suppose. Deflate it at about one and at about three hours.

Deflate? You mean punch down, right?

No. Punching down isn’t quite right. Fold the dough. Get out the biggest of the bubbles, but don’t punch. Remove the dough to a floured surface and fold gently. This will have two potential effects. It will remove the bubbles, and it will generate a little bit of layering to the dough. No, that layering might not last once you shape the dough, but it can’t hurt, at least in my piddly little experience.

At the end of this latest, or “bench” ferment, take the dough out of the bowl. It will be glutenous and kind of sticky, and, depending on the product you desire at project’s end, you can work it as much or as little as you like. If you beat the hell out of it, you will end up with some bready rocks. If you just split off three little or two loafish chunks, and form them, you’ll get a more delicate product that will stand up to less abuse after baking. If you’re making bread for peanut-butter, go ahead and work it a little. If you’re making bread for consumption out of hand, or to just lay a slice of cheese over, you don’t really have to work it much. Dig?

Either way, after working or not, take your dough apart into two or three equal parts. I don’t like to shape, precisely, but rather to pull the outside to the bottom, sort of like making a reverse clay bowl. Pull gently and fold the pulled dough under. You should get a smooth result , with a sort of rounded bump on the bottom. Smooth this out a little, and place on either an oiled pan or a non-stick mat (or one of them fancy Baker’s Couche things, if you have one). Allow the bread to relax and rise for about another hour.

Then, into a 375 degree oven it goes (again, unless you’ve got a Couche/board arrangement, in which case, do whatever fancy thing you gotta do, there). It has been my experience that it should take about half an hour to cook through and to develop a pretty substantial crust.

Now, to steam or not to steam.

OK, not now. Now the bread’s done. This is one to think about while the oven’s preheating. Steaming produces a very different crust than failing to do so. Both are good. If you want to try it, put a pan of water on the bottom shelf, and then, just before putting in the bread, toss some water on the bottom shelf. It will make a big, dangerous steam cloud, and probably warp the bottom of your oven, unless you’ve got special equipment. This alone is the reason I don’t steam my oven. This, and the possibility that it will put out my oven flame and fill my house with deadly gas. The decision’s yours. Is the possibility that you might die worth a really outstanding crust? I say no. I say, bread is good. It’s your call.

Is there a safe alternative? Sure. Put a jelly roll sheet pan on the bottom shelf, and let it preheat with your oven. Throw the water on that, and it will steam up just fine. I mean, if you want to go that route, that’s fine. It’s not really for me, but it’s fine.

The point is, now you have some bread. You will notice two immediate improvements over not making bread that takes a whole 24 hours. First, the texture is awesome. It is markedly improved, and much more pleasing than its younger cousin. Second, the flavor is different. Is it better? I say so, but I’m also a fan of the Substance Known as Sourdough. This is an easy way to suggest it without all that pesky work, and is the only way I personally know to produce Ciabatta, but not with this recipe. That’s another time, and another set of ratios.

Serrano’s Symphony Square on Red River

Yes, but what about the food?

linq: Serrano’s

Symphony Square is a sort of combination of two places, right on Waller Creek, off Red River and the sort of 11th or 12th street that plagues Austin. There is, there on Symphony Square, a building which seems affiliated with the Austin Symphony Orchestra and Perloo Union, at least based on its prominent signs stating same, and an installment of Local/Regional Chain Serrano’s.

I am not a fan, as a rule, of Waller Creek. It is not an ugly stretch of water, as a whole, but the part I see daily is where it intersects with our friend Sixth Street, and it is difficult to describe this quotidian view without using words like “cesspool” and “gross.” The Creek running, as it does, from North to South, the stretch immediately north of my daily rounds is pretty nice. Care has been and continues to be put into keeping the area pleasant, and the bit that flows near Symphony Square is certainly of this nicer character.

We were in Serrano’s for something fewer than five minutes. The view I had of the interior suggested that this was the correct amount of time to spend there. The patio outside, though, demanded lingering. The weather being wonderful, we sat at a little table and took in the Lunch Special while two doves, a grackle and a sparrow (we decided) went about bird business across the tiered stone steps that lead down to the creek on the Restaurant side. At the creek, they face a small but very compelling stage with a tiny balcony some ten feet above and to the right, and a picturesque stone bridge. A sign on the structure suggests that this area has been standing there, compelling viewers to wonder about the musical possibilities of a little Water Music since the late 1970s. It goes on to dedicate it to two driving founders of the ASOPU, and their dreams that made this little refinement of modern life possible.

I believe the consensus of the LNB staff present there that day was a general agreement.

We discussed a progression of logic and memetics as regards the evolution of ideas, and a suggestion of a theory of knowledge tangential to these, but still prenatal and gravid with the suggestion of future usefulness. We discussed a South American bird which makes a sound and vibration like a Cellular Telephone, and which has adapted to hiding in the purses of South American residents, and to a diet composed entirely of ossified gum and hairy mints. We spoke on the subject of the compulsions suggested by that little stage and the balcony above, and on the general pleasantness of the day and of the setting.

There was, as there so often is, food, I guess.

The food did not lodge in my mind in quite the way that the setting managed to. I think I had something with chicken. I think the day involved a burrito, but that it was not my burrito. I remember this, mainly, because I remember the look in the Grackle’s face as we considered advising the server to keep handy the remainder of the Donkey Smothered in Cheese, should hunger so dictate.

And we handled our obligations and still sat, soaking in the cool day, between rains, in the shade of the creek trees, as the dervish birds whiled away the afternoon at doubtless important tasks.

One Very Hot Chili out of a Seemingly Incongruous String of Them

The Frisco Nighthawk

A Facelift, New Digs, Still a Place You Should Go

linq: The Frisco

My first experience with the Frisco was several years ago. I was involved in a theater production at a little theater place next door, and between acts we would sneak over and buy sodas, and sneak them backstage. The Frisco’s building is now yet another pharmacy, of the type found by the dozens in almost every city across the country. When I saw that the place was closing, I was glad that I had started attending semi-irregularly, and had wrung as much joy out of it as I had. Naturally, there are those who have derived decades more than I had, but I did not feel cheated, just that I wished they would open up in a larger place, maybe a mile up the road.

Imagine my surprise, then, when they filled the hole that Curras left, right up the street.

The place is the same, relatively, although they had a little rough patch just after they opened. The fare is fine, and they will bring you chopped steak and boiled vegetables on a plate. I mean, that’s why you go there, right? You want chopped steak or a fine burger, or, if you’re awake early, something to break fast, you head on in and enjoy the comfort of the new place.

No, to be honest. That’s not why you go, and we both know it. Do I have to enumerate the wonders? Let me name just two. They are Strawberry and Icebox Chocolate. The whipped cream is an inch thick and the filling is creamy and wonderful. Words being worth, as they are, one one-thousandth of a picture, I will save you the trouble and let James (of whom I am the Dad, as per my nom de écran) explain.

The point, as it so often is, is pie.

One daily vegetable special that we’re out of, of eight daily vegetable specials.

El Sol Y La Luna

Cerrado del dia solo la Luna

linq: El Sol Y La Luna, Austin

The problem with playing competitive sports against oneself, really, is that it is easy to lob oneself a softball, particularly in Early Innings. This being, as it were, still prior to the halfway point of the game, or some equally tortured sports metaphor, we have lobbed fat ones across the plate with our early selections.

Maybe I should avoid baseball references. Perhaps they are impolitic, this being March.

El Sol Y La Luna on 6th is an establishment with which I am familiar, my having eaten there on more than one occasion. The difficulty, really, is approaching it with fresh eyes, even as I go there yet again, trying to think of something interesting to say about it. How about this: the food is good, and the place has a nice feel to it.

That’s easy. Maybe it’s too easy. Maybe you want more than that. I can respect that. I mean, you pay your dime, you take your turn, and at the end of the day, you hope you have an idea whether you want to eat at a place or not, right?

OK, well, El Sol Y La Luna is a place where you can get tasty food. The menu is not particularly challenging, containing as it does only tried and tasty items which are quite up front on their contents. The enchiladas are tasty. The tamales are fine and dandy. The soup is soup. I’ve been fond of the “Healthy Lunch” for some time, even before I decided I needed to watch my diet, which is my current, arguably unfortunate, state. The Lunch is a simple arrangement of avocado, chicken, beans and vegetables that will satisfy admirably while being as relatively healthy as one can order without having to be pretentious and asking for a Salad with No Fun Stuff On.

You don’t want salad. I respect that. I don’t like asking for salad anywhere but Kerbey, and there only because they will bring me a bowl of raw spinach without too much fuss. I love spinach, and I am unashamed of the fact, but it remains beside the point.

The point is, simply, that for a place which has proved thus far devoid of pie, El Sol Y La Luna nonetheless acquits itself toothsomely.

Four Chips Up, Two Left

Texas Embassy

I love what you’ve… done with your hair?

Linq:  Texas Embassy

You know that friend? The one who took that lifestyle choice that you couldn’t exactly get behind, but you really, really wanted to be supportive anyway? Maybe it was a political shift that put them at odds with your particular demographic. Maybe it was a new mode of dress and speech that makes you feel uneasy in public. Maybe it was a change in religion that makes it difficult to be a human nearby. Maybe they gave up animal products and have to harass every member of every staff of every store you go into, so as to make sure that none of the neckties worn by the lunching execs are silk because that’s cruel to worms.

That’s how it feels, going in to Texas Embassy.

In that location once lived our friend, Habana Calle 6. We got along fine, and we’d drop in from time to time because Habana Calle 6 was a bunch of fun. We could always get plantains, and Pulled Pork and taro, and then laugh about how funny it was that Habana Calle 6 served sauce called Mojo sauce (until it came and we were reminded of precisely why it was so called and sung it praises loud and long). We could listen to the music and imagine that we were in the far-away land of South Congress, surrounded by the exotic trees of the Great Outdoors nursery, and the drifting sounds of people shopping for twee crap up on the North End of the So Co, all while enjoying what I consider to be one of the finer patios in Austin Downtown Waller Creek faux-Riverwalk Dining.

And then, one day, began a remodel. Things changed. The tunnel leading over to the dance club was open only sporadically. Then, the sign changed. Habana Calle 6 started insisting on being called Texas Embassy, and stopped serving half the menu, for “reasons.” Then, the menu changed entirely. The food became distinctly different. Fried chicken and relative steak ruled the bill of fare. I’ll admit, their fried chicken wasn’t bad, but it smacked of the amateur and the nouveau gras. This chicken wasn’t quite right. No elderly relative, real or fictitious, had given this recipe to anyone, no secret herbs were included, no mystery surrounded any part of the chicken, bread or mustard-based dippin’ sause. This was food to be consumed nearly unconsciously while devouring The Game took up the prime spot in the brain. Nothing to complain about, mind you, but nothing to write home about either (hi, Mom!).

We entered their mysterious confines twice. The chairs were the same. The waitstaff, aside from some curiously callipygian costume changes, was the same. The music changed, to the point that each part of the restaurant played a different kind of generic boilerplate Sports Bar music, each insulated from the rest, giving it the Frankenstein quality of being four or five different sports bars that had a large, weird, bastard child who happened, quite by accident, to look kind of like our old friend.

We went back today with a duplicitous goal in mind. I suggested it because I wanted this to be fresh in my mind as I dissected the corpse of our bud, Habana Calle 6, or, as he seems now to insist he be called, The Texas Embassy.

We sat down, and I looked at the menu, and there, in bold, beautiful letters, set out in the carefully familiar font, was the ghost of that wonderful Habana menu. That old Cuban Spanish floated up and kissed my eyelids, and I shed a gleeful tear at the sight of the familiar favorites.

Someone heard my prayers, and the ghost of Habana Calle 6 seems to be haunting this new Texas Embassy. That, or, I suppose, they tired of being asked for the Ropa Vieja when they had stopped its production. And so, the menu lives on.

If you get a chance, and you happen to be there on a Habana night, try anything with the Mojo Sauce on it, particularly the fried taro with same. You cannot go wrong. Their house dressing has a little bit of that magic snuck into it, making even their salads (you can get lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and your choice of avocado or not) a thing of beauty. The old place seems to be living, in spite of the sign. I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to when or why the menu changes, but I don’t care. There were plantains. There was Mojo sauce. My afternoon was beautiful.

Hare Rama out of Wo0OOoohSpooky.